TORONTO — Cal Raleigh homered with the final swing of his dream season. At that moment, halfway through the seventh game of the American League Championship Series, the distant star wasn’t so blurry anymore. The Seattle Mariners had never seen it so clearly.
And then it disappeared. A home run by George Springer of the Toronto Blue Jays shattered the telescope and upended the ship. The franchise that has known only choppy seas for nearly 50 years capsized again.
The season is over. The World Series, as ever, is something for other fans in other cities.
“I love every guy in this room,” Raleigh said at his locker late Monday night, as the Blue Jays celebrated their 4-3 victory, in the game and the series, on the Rogers Centre turf.
“But, ultimately, it’s not what we wanted. I hate to use the word failure, but it’s a failure. That’s what we expected, was to get to a World Series and win the World Series. That’s what the bar is and what the standard is, and that’s what we want to hold ourselves accountable to. It hurts.”
The team of Raleigh and Julio Rodríguez went deeper into the postseason than any that came before. Ken Griffey Jr., Edgar Martínez, Randy Johnson, Ichiro Suzuki, Adrián Beltré, Félix Hernández — none of them ever played a game with a chance to win the pennant for Seattle.
This group played two. The first, Game 6 on Sunday night, wasn’t really close. The second, the only Game 7 in franchise history, could not have been more painful.
“For it to end like this,” said pitcher Bryan Woo. “It’s heartbreaking to say the least.”
The Mariners scored first. Then George Kirby walked the leadoff hitter, who came around to score. That had happened once in his previous 63 starts. A bad sign, but no matter: Rodríguez homered in the third and Raleigh in the fifth.
It was all happening. Then, after two sharp innings, Woo walked Addison Barger to lead off the seventh. The Mariners, a team built on the premise that walks are unacceptable, would not get away with it again.
The bottom of the Blue Jays’ order tormented the Mariners all series. It is one thing for Springer and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to hurt you, but Ernie Clement, Addison Barger, Isiah Kiner-Falefa and Andrés Giménez combined to hit .292. And when Kiner-Falefa singled and Giménez sacrificed the runners, Mariners manager Dan Wilson called for a reliever — but not his best one.
It was Eduard Bazardo, a top setup man who had shut out Toronto for two innings in Game 6. All-Star closer Andrés Muñoz, who had allowed no hits all month, was not even warming up.
“Bazardo has been the guy that’s gotten us through those situations, those tight ones, especially in the pivot role,” Wilson said, meaning situations with runners on base where a pitcher must pivot from a jam.
“You make your decisions, and sometimes you have to live and die with it. I think, again, the way Bazardo has thrown the ball all season long, we were comfortable with where we were.”
Wilson could have walked Springer with first base open, but dismissed the idea for two reasons: it would have put the go-ahead run on base, he said, “and then that also introduces Vladdy into the equation if you don’t get the double play.”
Fair point, and besides, Wilson had just seen Bazardo beat Springer with a thigh-high, inside sinker at 96 mph in Game 6. That time, Springer grounded harmlessly to third. This time, Bazardo threw the same thigh-high, inside sinker at 96 mph — and it soared into Blue Jays lore.
“He was ready to hit the ball,” Bazardo said. “I was attacking him, he was attacking me, and that was the pitch that he can connect (with), because I was attacking in the same spot. Yesterday I threw the same pitch right there, it was a ground ball. Today was the day he got me.”
This was Bazardo’s first full season after most of a decade in the minors. Two years ago, when his ERA was 15.43 for the Baltimore Orioles, the Mariners traded for Bazardo at the deadline because they thought so highly of his stuff and arm action.
He thrived this season with regular work, and Game 7 was his 82nd appearance overall. In all of those games — and the 49 he’d pitched in the majors before this season — Bazardo had never experienced this.
“I never lost one game all season, and today, the most important game, I lost the game,” he said. “It’s a little incredible, that part.”
By the time Muñoz entered in the eighth, the Mariners had lost the lead for good. It was a strikingly traditional decision; modern managers often make sure to use their best reliever in the highest-leverage moments, especially in October.
But Muñoz is so entrenched as the closer that the PA announcer in Seattle uses that title for him during pregame introductions. He did not appear before the eighth inning all season, and emphasized after Game 7 that Bazardo was the right choice to face Springer.
“He’s been awesome for us this season,” Muñoz said. “One homer doesn’t (change) how good a season he had. I think it’s very important that everybody knows about how good he is. Probably without him, we wouldn’t be able to be here.”
Falling behind in an elimination game before using the closer had echoes of another moment at Rogers Centre, in 2016, when the Orioles’ Buck Showalter never called for relief ace Zack Britton in a wild-card loss.
But Muñoz — an admirable teammate — hit on a truism about postseason baseball: the wisdom of a decision is independent of the result. Bazardo could have easily gotten another ground out from Springer, survived the inning and given a lead to Muñoz for a two-inning save.
“At that moment, they think that was a good decision, and we all support that because we’ve been doing that throughout the whole season,” Muñoz said. “Today it didn’t work (but it) doesn’t mean that they (made) a wrong call. Today wasn’t the day, that’s it.”
The Mariners could not mount a comeback. They had left runners in scoring position in the second, fourth and seventh innings, and managed just one hit — Raleigh’s homer — in 5 ⅓ innings against Toronto’s bullpen.
For the series, the Blue Jays had 15 more hits than the Mariners, and 31 fewer strikeouts. In the ninth, closer Jeff Hoffman fanned Leo Rivas, Dominic Canzone and Rodríguez (who saw nothing but sliders) to end the season with Raleigh on deck.
To Raleigh — whose offseason could include a Most Valuable Player award — the year was a failure by the cold calculus of the outcome, the same one that has concluded the other 48 seasons of Mariners baseball. They remain the only team to never reach the World Series.
And yet, it was not a year like so many regrettable ones from the past. No pitcher got caught with a thumbtack in his glove. No infielder tried to blow a slow roller into foul territory. No megastars — Johnson, Griffey, Alex Rodriguez — left town in their primes.
The roster is strong. The farm system is sound. Players want to stay, not flee. The standard that matters so deeply to Raleigh has never been closer to reality.
“This season was very special for everybody,” third baseman Eugenio Suárez said. “For everybody involved in this organization, we have to feel proud. We have to feel happy. The future for this organization is huge, and we have to feel comfortable about that.”
Suárez, it turned out, had the final highlight of the season, the grand slam in Game 5 that put the Mariners on the precipice of a pennant.
They never raised the trident in victory again, and that emptiness will linger.
“It’s gonna be there for a long time,” Suárez conceded. “But it’s time to go home. It’s time to rest.”
To rest and reflect on the closest near-miss — and most devastating defeat — for a franchise still desperate to lasso the moon.
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