Here is the paradox of the Mariners’ season: They are the team absolutely no one wants to face in the postseason. And they have absolutely no guarantee of reaching that destination.
It’s what makes this 2023 simultaneously so frustrating and yet so enticing. Given up as a lost cause at so many different junctures, they nonetheless have given themselves a fighting chance to eke out a playoff spot. And if it happens, it’s not hard to dream about what would be possible when you can throw out Luis Castillo, George Kirby and Logan Gilbert in a short series. I had a colleague posit recently that they are closer right now to winning the World Series than they were a year ago in the drought-breaking season.
All well and good — but the Mariners are still a decided longshot to make the postseason, even with a torrid stretch of 16 wins in 20 games that for one shining moment on Saturday afternoon pulled them percentage points ahead of Toronto for the final AL wild-card berth.
But as we all know, Mariners fans aren’t allowed to have nice things. Following Toronto’s loss Saturday that put them in that position, and following a stirring ceremony to induct Felix Hernandez into the Mariners Hall of Fame, they proceeded to give the ultimate homage to Felix’s career by providing George Kirby with zero runs in support of his magnificent nine-inning shutout performance en route to a 1-0 Seattle loss in 10 innings. So much for the wild-card lead that was theirs for the taking.
Another frustrating loss to Baltimore followed Sunday, and then an equally frustrating loss Monday to Kansas City punctuated by a walkoff squeeze bunt — perhaps more so when put in the context of a Royals team headed for 110 losses that should have been easy pickings. The fact that each of those games was ultimately lost with a final-inning bullpen lapse opens a new area of concern after the trade of closer Paul Sewald — a worry that was only exacerbated on Tuesday despite a tense 10-8 victory in 10 innings.
As has so often been the case for the Mariners this year, one of their best moments — a rally from 5-0 down to take the lead in the ninth inning Monday — turned out to be diabolically anticlimactic. So you can put the game-tying and go-ahead hits by Josh Rojas and Julio Rodriguez into the same sad box that contains Kolten Wong’s go-ahead home run vs. Minnesota, Jarred Kelenic’s game-tying homer in the ninth at Wrigley Field, Mike Ford’s game-tying home run off indomitable Baltimore closer Felix Bautista with two outs in the ninth and Dominic Canzone’s two-out, game-tying home run in the ninth inning Sunday — all of which came in games the Mariners eventually lost in heartbreaking fashion.
And put each of those three defeats into the box that will contain the seeds of the Mariners demise should they fail to grab a playoff spot — of which they had just a 25.8% chance of doing by FanGraphs calculation following Tuesday’s win. That’s down from 43.6% after beating the Orioles on Friday (but up from 13% as recently as July 19, when the M’s lost to the Twins to fall under .500, presumably for the final time).
You can point to any number of excruciating losses that have put the Mariners in this tenuous spot (if you don’t want to, on a more fundamental level, point to the failure to adequately address their offensive shortcomings in the offseason as the culprit), starting ominously with a 6-5 loss to the Guardians on April 2 — Game 4 — in which a throwing error by Cal Raleigh on what would have been an inning-ending double play allowed the winning run to score in the 10th.
Thus was set the pattern of agonizing losses, often by one run and/or in extra innings, that will haunt their dreams in the offseason if the Mariners fall just short of the postseason. The list is too long to run in its entirety, but the highlights (lowlights?) include:
* The 7-0 lead over the Cubs that slipped away April 11.
* The 1-0 loss to the Phillies despite a George Kirby complete-game masterpiece (foreshadowing!) April 27.
* The 4-3 loss in 11 innings to the White Sox on June 17 when Sewald blew the save in the ninth and the Mariners went hitless over the final six innings.
* The 7-4 loss in 11 innings to the Nationals on June 27 in which they somehow failed to score in the 10th with the bases loaded and no outs (replicated July 8 in a 3-2 loss to the Astros, in which light-hitting Martin Maldonado won it with a homer off Andres Munoz).
* The boo-inducing, 4-1 loss to the Nationals on June 28 in which struggling Patrick Corbin, with his 5.22 ERA and .309 opponents batting average, blanked them on five hits over seven innings.
* The still freshly horrifying Cedric Mullins double-whammy Sunday.
* The Matt Brash ninth-inning meltdown Monday.
Gruesome stuff, no doubt, and Tuesday’s game looked for a time like it might be the worst of the bunch — but back to the original premise. Seattle’s starting pitching in the Orioles series was more than enough to make you realize that despite all that heartbreak, great things could still happen for the Mariners this year.
Just ask Orioles manager Brandon Hyde, who was effusive in his gushing over the Mariners arms, particularly after Luis Castillo was dominant over six innings in the opener (two hits, one run, eight strikeouts), followed by Kirby’s utter masterpiece. All that came a few days after Gilbert shut down the Padres on one hit over seven innings, with 12 strikeouts.
Yes, the daydreaming about a potentially dominant playoff rotation comes mixed with frustration over an offense that, while vastly improved over the past month, still is subject to untimely stretches of dormancy. The other, less-satisfying daydream one could appropriately have about the Mariners season is how well this team would be set up with a better functioning offense from the beginning. And now late-inning relief has emerged as a new worry following the departure of Sewald (for Rojas and Canzone, who had a combined slash line with Seattle of .208/.250/.321 through Monday) at the trade deadline. On Tuesday, Munoz was unable to preserve a three-run lead in the ninth as the Mariners squandered all of their early 7-0 lead, only to pull it out on Ty France’s two-run, two-out single in the 10th. It was as clutch a hit as they’ve had all year, considering how devastating it would have been to lose that game.
As Matt Calkins wrote Monday, the Mariners have a golden opportunity to solidify their playoff chances during a stretch of 19 games, in which 16 are against subpar teams (a stretch that got off to a bad start Monday, and nearly got worse on Tuesday). And they can’t blow it.
It’s going to be a race to the finish — with a potentially massive payoff even if they sneak into the postseason by the slimmest of margins. They have the rotation to make noise in October — but only if they’re not silenced before then.
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