ALCS Preview: Mariners and Blue Jays Get a Shot To Write New History

One of the first lessons we learn about life is that it’s rarely fair. Neither the Seattle Mariners nor the Toronto Blue Jays are historical doormats, but both franchises have been plagued over the last three decades by a lack of postseason success, if they reached the playoffs at all.

After the Jays won the 1993 World Series, it was 22 years until they made another postseason. Toronto has a lot of recent October appearances, but finished last in the AL East in 2024 and came into the 2025 playoffs after being swept out of the wild card round in its last three opportunities, including by Seattle in 2022. Aside from that series three years ago, the Mariners have had it even worse: They’ve never won a World Series — never even played in one — and their 2022 postseason appearance snapped a 21-year playoff drought. So the 2025 ALCS is a pretty big deal for both teams, as someone is going to face the Brewers or Dodgers for baseball’s championship.

The Rotations

The starting rotation was not one of Toronto’s strengths in 2025. Of the 12 playoff teams, the Jays rotation ranked at the bottom in ERA, FIP, ERA-, and WAR. This wasn’t a surprise resulting from a bunch of nasty surprises, as we ranked the rotation 20th coming into the season.

Kevin Gausman is the undisputed ace — something which kind of annoys me as an Orioles fan — and while he only reclaimed about a third of the strikeout rate that disappeared from 2023 to 2024, he has remained highly effective. And just as importantly for a pitcher, he is about as durable as they come, as he’s thrown the third-most innings of any pitcher over the last decade, and over the last five years, he’s second to only Logan Webb. What’s always struck me as impressive about Gausman is that he does it effectively as a two-pitch pitcher. The first is a four-seamer that he throws over half the time, primarily early in counts. The second is a nasty splitter, and one that he uses effectively against batters from both sides of the plate. (He also throws a slider, mostly to righties, but he uses it less than 10% of the time, and it’s never been an out pitch.)

Gausman is an exclamation point, but after him comes a number of questions. José Berríos isn’t the pitcher he once was, and he was even sent to the bullpen at the end of the year before being placed on the IL with an elbow injury. Max Scherzer was signed to a one-year deal coming into 2025, but he missed three months with a thumb injury, and outside of a good run in August, he’s been hit very hard. Scherzer didn’t even make the ALDS roster; I have a lot of admiration for the physical bravery of the Blue Jays employee who had to break that to him. Bowden Francis was even less effective, and he’s been out since June with a shoulder impingement. Chris Bassitt did a great job eating innings for Toronto this season, and after missing the end of the season and the ALDS with back tightness, he made the ALCS roster. It’s unclear at the moment how the Jays plan on using both Bassitt and Scherzer, but the expectation is that one of them will start Game 4, with the other working out of the bullpen.

Toronto was forced to improvise down the stretch and in the playoffs in order to find enough starting pitching. Following last year’s Tommy John surgery, Shane Bieber didn’t make his season debut until the third week of August. He isn’t his Cy Young-winning self, but the Jays acquired him from the Guardians in a deadline deal without giving up much, and they likely wouldn’t have gotten the top AL seed without him. Not chastened by the past struggles of prospects Nate Pearson and Ricky Tiedemann, the Jays advanced 2024 first-round pick Trey Yesavage through the system aggressively. Yesavage’s elevation paid off last week when he made the Yankees look like little leaguers with 11 strikeouts over 5 1/3 hitless innings.

We ranked the Mariners rotation highly coming into the season, at seventh in baseball, but remember what I said about life seldom being fair? Seattle’s solid starting five turned out to be more of a problem than expected. George Kirby and Bryce Miller missed significant time, and Emerson Hancock turned out to be a less-than-enthralling fill-in. Logan Gilbert missed a couple of months with a flexor strain, and since coming back, he’s performed more like a solid no. 2 or 3 starter than an ace. The good news is, it’s looking like the Mariners will have all five of their desired starting pitchers available for the ALCS, with Bryan Woo returning from a pectoral injury. That’s an advantage in a seven-game series, where it’s a lot harder to paper over a few missing pitchers with bullpen games.

The Mariners have already tapped Miller to face off against Gausman in Game 1, a decision they almost certainly wouldn’t have made in a perfect world, as Miller will be pitching on short rest. He threw 55 pitches in ALDS Game 4, so he should be mostly recovered, but the real reason he’s starting is because the other options are on even less rest. Kirby was the starter against Tarik Skubal in Friday night’s Game 5, and during the 15-inning marathon, the Mariners needed to use both Gilbert and Luis Castillo out of the bullpen. (Woo doesn’t appear to be quite ready for Sunday.) Yes, Trey is savage, but I’d still give the Mariners an overall edge here despite these concerns. Rotational depth works to their advantage.

The Lineups

The Blue Jays ranked fourth in the AL in runs scored, but unlike a lot of their successful offenses in previous years, this wasn’t on the back of home runs. The lineup was a bit of a throwback, as Toronto made the most contact in the majors and ranked third in line drive percentage. The result was a .265 team batting average, the best in baseball. (Hey, it’s 2025.) Anthony Santander disappointed in his first season in Toronto, but that was mainly because he missed the bulk of the season with a shoulder injury. And besides, his absence was more than compensated for by the surprising resurgence of George Springer, who seemed to be running on fumes in 2024. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. got to immediate work earning his megadeal, and players like Bo Bichette and Alejandro Kirk had full comebacks from their underwhelming 2024 contributions.

One thing the Blue Jays did very well here was filling in the holes around their best performers. Toronto entered the season with a lot of secondary talent to sort through, with players like Ernie Clement, Addison Barger, and Davis Schneider all showing flashes of situational value, but generally with unanswered questions. The Jays squeezed a lot of performance out of this trio, as well as from Nathan Lukes. That left Toronto with enough offense that it could appreciate the glovework of Andrés Giménez, the only real offensive hole in its 2025 lineup.

We won’t know for a few weeks whether or not Cal Raleigh is the AL MVP, but it’s undeniable that 2025 was his season. Good defensive catchers that hit 60 homers are exceedingly rare; the list in baseball history consists of he, himself, and him. He’s the biggest part of the Seattle lineup, but let’s not forget about the Big Dumper Extended Universe. Julio Rodríguez made his third All-Star Game, and I’d argue that he’s somehow become underrated across baseball fandom generally, overshadowed by his slow starts to seasons and the Dumper behind the dish. Randy Arozarena turned out to be the left field answer the Mariners were looking for, and J.P. Crawford didn’t resemble his 2024 version at all. Jorge Polanco surprisingly had the best offensive season of his career, and Seattle bolstered its offense ahead of the trade deadline, when it added both Josh Naylor and Eugenio Suárez in separate deals with the Diamondbacks.

All told, the Mariners had the third-best wRC+ in baseball this season, behind only the Yankees and Dodgers, and that was accomplished playing two-thirds of the year without Naylor or Suárez. Their 113 wRC+ ranks third in team history, behind only the 1997 and 2001 editions. The Blue Jays have a very solid offense, but both ZiPS and I agree here: Seattle’s is a bit more dangerous, especially because Bichette was left off Toronto’s roster because of a knee injury.

The Bullpens

Both teams had middling bullpens this season, finishing in the middle of the pack both in regular ol’ numbers and fancy sabermetric stats. But the playoffs are largely about high-leverage hurlers, and that makes the weaker underbelly of both bullpens less of an issue. I’d take Seattle’s top-five relievers, consisting of Andrés Muñoz, Matt Brash, Eduard Bazardo, Caleb Ferguson, and Gabe Speier, over Toronto’s quintet of Jeff Hoffman, Yariel Rodríguez, Seranthony Domínguez, Louis Varland, and Brendon Little, but by a smaller margin than you might think: Park effects make the Jays look a bit worse and the M’s a bit better than reality demands.

The edge between the two bullpens may not come down to which one is better, but rather, which one is the most rested. Brash, Muñoz, and Bazardo all had multi-inning appearances on Friday, and with Miller pitching on short rest, the Mariners can’t count on getting seven innings from their Game 1 starter. If the Jays get to Miller early, Seattle may have to simply rely on someone like Hancock to throw four or five innings to preserve the pen for Game 2 and beyond. Toronto enters Sunday with three full days of rest.

The Bullpens

Of course there are going to be projections!

ZiPS gives the Mariners a slight overall edge, 56% to 44%. The two biggest questions, at least based on how ZiPS sees it, is Woo’s availability and the Scherzer or Bassitt start. If for some reason Woo isn’t healthy, the edge shrinks to 51% to 49% in the projections. And as for Scherzer, whatever the projections think, I’m not sure that I’d want to count him out in what possibility could be the final start of his Hall of Fame career.