Wednesday night’s results leave Mariners with tough task

Published 10:05 am Thursday, September 29, 2016

Wednesday afternoon was good for the Seattle Mariners’ playoff hopes, as the M’s defeated the Houston Astros 12-4 to all but eliminate the Astros from AL Wild Card contention.

However, Wednesday night couldn’t have gone much worse. The Baltimore Orioles’ Hyun Soo Kim slugged a ninth-inning, two-run homer against the Toronto Blue Jays to give the Orioles a 3-2 victory. Then the Detroit Tigers won a rain-shortened game against the Cleveland Indians 6-3. Those results will make things very difficult for Seattle in its final series of the season.

Here’s the AL Wild Card standings going into Thursday:

Toronto: 87-71 (+1.0)

Baltimore: 86-72 (0.0)

Detroit: 85-73 (-1.0)

Seattle: 84-74 (-2.0)

Two of those teams will qualify for the Wild Card. All four have four games remaining. Seattle is at home for a four-game series against the Oakland Athletics; Baltimore and Toronto have one game remaining before the Orioles finish with a three-game series at the New York Yankees and the Blue Jays finish with a three-game set at the Boston Red Sox; and Detroit has one more home game against Cleveland before ending with a three-game series at the Atlanta Braves.

According to FanGraphs.com, Wednesday’s results dropped Seattle’s chances of making the postseason to 8.0 percent. It would seem that for Seattle to have any chance of playing past Sunday the Mariners need to win at least three of the four games against Oakland, then hope to get some help.