Every time Yordan Alvarez has stepped to the plate against the Mariners this week, I’m reminded of Star Trek. There’s an in-show famous training exercise known as the Kobayashi Maru, one every single officer candidate tries. The goal is to rescue a ship named, you guessed it, Kobayashi Maru. It’s famous because you can’t beat it. No matter what you try, you fail. The test isn’t about succeeding; it’s about how you handle failure.

That’s the energy Alvarez is bringing to the plate in the ALDS right now. He always seems to step into big spots — Jeremy Peña has done a great job getting on base in front of him — and delivers runs in droves. He’s 4–8 with two homers and a double and has accounted for seven RBI on those hits. Bring in Robbie Ray to face him? He doesn’t care. Refuse to enter the strike zone? He doesn’t care.

In the bottom of the eighth inning last night, Scott Servais attempted a new Kobayashi Maru solution. With Peña on first base and two outs in a one-run game, he chose to walk Alvarez intentionally. That put a runner in scoring position for Alex Bregman, hardly a weak hitter. Bregman singled home that insurance run the Astros were aiming for, the Mariners didn’t score in the ninth, and that was that. Read the rest of this entry »

Hindsight is always 20/20, a truism that is acutely felt after a particularly heartbreaking loss. It’s one ringing true in the heads of Mariners fans who witnessed a Game 1 victory in the AL Division Series slip through their fingers yesterday. Ben Clemens had the game recap, but I wanted to hone in on the final, decisive at-bat in the bottom of the ninth. More specifically, I want to try to answer the question in the headline: what were the Mariners thinking when they brought in Robbie Ray to face Yordan Alvarez?

On the surface, the move looks defensible. Paul Sewald had gotten the first two outs of the inning but had allowed two baserunners to reach to bring Alvarez to the plate. Why not bring in the lefty to gain the platoon advantage? Seattle even thought this very situation through in the lead up to this series. After the game, Mariners manager Scott Servais explained how that plan came to be:

“It was something going into the series where we were at, looking at our rotation, where we were going to head, and talking with Robbie about using him out of the bullpen as a bullet, so to speak, for that type of scenario. Bringing in a lefty against Alvarez, although Alvarez is one of the better hitters in the league … I looked at it in the seventh inning and said, ‘Hey, this could happen.’ So that was the plan going in.”

The Mariners aren’t strangers to game planning around Alvarez, having faced him dozens of times in the regular season during his career. Not that it’s done them much good: he has a career .305/.385/.597 (166 wRC+) slash line against Seattle in 179 plate appearances. You really can’t game plan around Alvarez, either; he’s one of the best hitters in the league and was one of the two best hitters in baseball this year. And it’s not like gaining the platoon advantage is much of an advantage anyway, given his impossibly small career platoon split: a .404 wOBA versus right-handers and a .406 wOBA against left-handers. His career strikeout rate against southpaws is even a few points lower. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mariners didn’t have an imposing offense this season. They hung their hat on pitching and defense, with a pinch of offense when they most needed it. The Astros turned otherwise-imposing offenses into weaklings; they allowed a shocking 3.2 runs per game, second only to the Dodgers in the majors. They brought out the likely Cy Young winner for today’s matchup. I’m sure you can see where this is going: Seattle scored seven runs and allowed eight.

It’s fair to say that Justin Verlander didn’t have his best stuff today. His slider came out flat; of the first eight that the Mariners swung at, they came up empty on only one. His fastball was scattershot, its normal backspinning movement coming and going, as did his command of the pitch. But he might have gotten away with it, if it weren’t for that meddling kid.

The kid, in this instance, is Julio Rodríguez. He’s an electric talent, a generational Seattle superstar in the mold of Ken Griffey Jr. After a sensational rookie season, he had a quiet start to the playoffs in Toronto, but he was in the straw that stirred the drink for Seattle today. Read the rest of this entry »

Decision-making in the playoffs is a micro-focused as you can imagine. The level of preparation which goes into these games will never be fully known in the public sphere, but if a team wants even the slightest competitive edge, you better believe the details are as granular as the fine sands of Puerto Rico’s Playa Negrita.

Every opposing hitter has a zone and/or pitch that is a weak spot. You must know who on your pitching staff is best suited to throw to those weaknesses, and what hitters are most adaptable to use pitch sequences that will play to those same weaknesses. The following matchups are a few areas that could sway any given game in either direction. They are certainly not the only of high importance, but the statistical or situational holes make them worth mentioning. I’ll go through series by series and pick one that deserves attention, starting with the Yankees against the Guardians.

Guardians’ offense vs. Yankees’ sinkerballers

The Yankees’ bullpen is loaded with turbo sinkers and groundball pitchers. Lou Trivino, Jonathan Loáisiga, and Clay Holmes, to name a few, all feature a sinker as their primary fastball. Each of them will be used in high-leverage scenarios against any layer of the Guardians’ lineup, which has been the very worst in the American League against the sinker, posting the second-lowest wOBA (.317) and the lowest xwOBA (.319).

There’s plenty to suggest the Yankees’ bullpen will give the Guardians issues. Because of those turbo sinkers, New York’s bullpen led all of baseball in GB% (49.1%) and Run Value (-20.3 runs). The next best in both categories was Baltimore, which trailed in each by a decent margin (1.5 percentage points and 1.9 runs). In today’s game, being better than every team at throwing sinkers provides a significant competitive advantage, as it keeps batted balls out of the air and on the ground. Read the rest of this entry »

When the American League Division Series begins on Tuesday, the Seattle Mariners will take on the Houston Astros as the ultimate underdogs. The Mariners are in the midst of their first postseason run in over 20 years, while the Astros have made their way to the ALCS in each of the past six seasons. No matter how you slice it, the Astros are the overwhelming favorites.

In fact, this might be the most winnable ALDS matchup the Astros have had over their seven-year run. Never before has the gulf between the Astros and their opponent been this wide:

Read the rest of this entry »

The National League’s adoption of the designated hitter this season eliminated the most noticeable difference between it and the American League. Now, the National League is what makes grown men in scarves weep on public transit, and the American League comes with a slice of melted cheese on top. (No, I have not updated my pop culture references since 2009, and I have no plans to do so.)

The only remaining difference is that the AL gets an extra off day during the Division Series. MLB announced in August that contrary to prior practice, the Division Series would no longer have a travel day between Games 4 and 5. But while the NL would play two games, get a day off, and then play three in a row, the American League gets an extra day off without travel between Games 1 and 2.

When the league announced this new scheme, an obvious question occurred to my colleague Dan Szymborski: How would this affect pitcher usage? Previously, a Division Series contestant could run four pitchers on full rest, and have both its Game 1 and Game 2 starter on full rest for the decisive match, if necessary. Or it could bring back its Game 1 starter on short rest for Game 4, and have everyone else start in order on regular rest. Moving or eliminating the off day throws that practice into chaos. Read the rest of this entry »

The history of the Seattle Mariners, as famously documented by Jon Bois and crew, is rife with bizarre, inexplicable, and downright hilarious episodes. But the most memorable of all, the one representative of the team’s scrappiness and tenacity, has to be The Double, Edgar Martinez’s famous hit in the bottom of the 11th that sent the Mariners to their first ever Championship Series in 1995, capitalized, given a Wikipedia article, and revered ever since.

The point is, the Mariners are no strangers to comebacks. They’ve been underdogs their entire existence; to them, surprise victories might as well be regular ones. A pinch-hit, walk-off home run from Cal Raleigh to clinch the team’s first playoff berth in two decades? Thrilling, yes, but just another day in the office. That pitted them against the Blue Jays, who before the series began were deemed favorites. But manager Scott Servais knew. “Expect the expected,” he said in an interview last Thursday, stressing the importance of preparation in an unfavorable situation.

At one point in Game 2, the Mariners were down 8–1. For the do-or-die Blue Jays, everything had gone according to plan; it looked like they would live to fight another day. Then the spirit of the Mariners awoke from its slumber. Ten combined runs later, the dust had settled. The final score: Seattle 10, Toronto 9. In the heat of the postseason, the Mariners authored another scorching come-from-behind win, with the Blue Jays their latest victim.

How innocuously it all began. With Kevin Gausman on the mound for the Blue Jays and Robbie Ray for the Mariners, we first got to enjoy some quality pitching. In the top of the first, Gausman struck out two batters and allowed only Raleigh to reach base on a walk (so did Ty France, but on a fielding error from Santiago Espinal). Moments later, Ray nabbed two swinging strikeouts and a groundout. So far, so peaceful. But in the bottom of the second, the game’s first cracks appeared, as Ray began leaking his pitches over the plate. Alejandro Kirk doubled, then Teoscar Hernández blasted a baseball to deep left field:

Ray managed to escape the inning without further harm, but that proved to be a mere respite. When he got back to work, Espinal led off with a double, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. drove him in with a single to center. And when Hernández hit another homer, this time to lead off the fourth, the Mariners had had enough. Matt Brash replaced Ray, who stopped just short of being outed as a double agent, and put out the fire.

But wait – it got even worse for the Mariners. It was Paul Sewald who was tasked with the fifth inning and beyond, which is odd considering they were down by four runs, but understandable when you realize their starter went just three innings. What happened next can only be described as ugly, bad, no-good baseball. This wasn’t a battle between Sewald and the Blue Jays. This was a battle between Sewald the Idea and Sewald the Man. The former is a lights-out reliever in perfect command of an advanced fastball and slider, concocted by Mariners pitching analysts in a lab buried in the depths of T-Mobile Park; the latter is a mere mortal who occasionally appears and has no idea where his pitches are going.

You can guess which version of Sewald the Mariners received on Saturday. The Blue Jays scored their fifth run on a passed ball with the bases loaded, then their sixth when Hernández bore the brunt of a hit by pitch. A sacrifice fly made it a seven run deficit for Seattle, and a double made it eight. When Diego Castillo entered the game to put Sewald out of his misery, Toronto’s chances of winning this pivotal game stood at 99.0%.

Ninety-nine percent.

But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let’s back up for a moment. While chaos ensued around him, Gausman was in the midst of an admirable performance. Sure, a single-double-sac fly sequence allowed one Mariner run to score, but he entered the sixth with seven strikeouts and a manageable pitch count. How did things go south from there? I’m glad you asked:

The honorary Frenchman hit a single, which under normal circumstances wouldn’t sound alarm bells. But it’s Gausman who’s on the mound, and he’s spent this season as the unluckiest pitcher around. To wit, his .363 BABIP allowed is the highest of any qualified starting pitcher post-integration, and that’s including the 60-game weirdness from 2020. Bloop hits and shallow line drives had driven Gausman to the ground all year long, and October was no exception. Following France’s lead, Eugenio Suárez hit his own single, as did Raleigh to load the bases with no outs. It indeed pours when it rains for Gausman, but he maintained his composure, striking out Mitch Haniger on six consecutive splitters and getting Adam Frazier to pop out.

The Blue Jays then went with Tim Mayza to face Carlos Santana, which sparked a bit of controversy. In a little over 2,000 career plate appearances facing lefties, Santana, a switch-hitter, has been notably better against them (125 wRC+) than righties (113 wRC+). Toronto must have had its reasons, but they were undone by a single swing:

Surprisingly, not much happened in the seventh. Mayza and Yimi Garcia combined to retire the side in order. A Danny Jansen single tacked on another run for Toronto, but the entire process, for once, resembled a functional baseball game. And while the Mariners had made a valiant effort, it still seemed like the Blue Jays had a clear path to victory. A four-run lead as the home team entering the top half of the eighth represents a 96.9% win probability, because teams realistically do not make up that large of a deficit in such a limited number of opportunities.

We’re now in the final chapter of this bazonkers game.

Anthony Bass is not some random reliever with a strike-throwing problem. He’s good! He had a 1.54 ERA this season. But, well, there are days when one allows consecutive hits without sporting any visible defects, and the Mariners simply made contact, tacking on a run and cutting their deficit to three. Because Bass failed to earn a single out, Jordan Romano came into the game earlier than expected, inheriting two baserunners. The Blue Jays’ closer started off by allowing another baserunner and potentially spelling disaster, but he recovered, striking out the next two batters. But the crisis wasn’t averted; it was merely delayed:

What a devastating minute for Toronto. While Bo Bichette got back to his feet, the collision resulted in George Springer exiting the game. More than allowing all three Mariners to score, though, the incident seemed to suck all the life out of the Rogers Centre. The game was tied, effectively halving the Blue Jays’ odds of survival, but they might as well have been zero. Despite Andrés Muñoz’s inability to find the zone, the top of Toronto’s somber and defeated order couldn’t muster a single run. Meanwhile, the Mariners immediately seized the moment: Raleigh doubled off Romano in the top of the ninth, as did Frazier to score the go-ahead run. George Kirby took the mound in the bottom half of the inning, ending the game on a fly ball that landed, rather fittingly, in the glove of Julio Rodríguez. Thus concluded one of the greatest comebacks in postseason baseball history. Chart, please:

The Double is the defining moment of Mariners history, but it might not have happened if not for a less-heralded yet equally enthralling rally. In Game 4 of the 1995 ALDS, the Mariners mounted a five-run comeback against the Yankees to force that decisive fifth game. For years, it stood as the largest postseason comeback win in franchise history – that is, until last night’s game. But in the context of a team on the ropes for half a century, it feels more like a progression of sorts than an upset. And it calls into question the definition of a comeback: Does it count as one if this is precisely how the Mariners grab onto success, however fleeting it may be?

In the days to follow, the emphasis could fall on the word “fleeting.” The Mariners will have to replicate their magic against the Astros, an even scarier squad than the Blue Jays, over the course a five-game series. They will enter the ring as not just the underdog, but to some, a mere stepping stone for a clearly superior team. As much as logic says to bet on Houston, however, we can’t count out the Mariners just yet. Not after their tumultuous history. Not after their multiple come-from-behind wins. And most of all, not after this game, in which they seemed inevitable.

If there were an ideal blueprint for the Mariners’ first playoff game since 2001, it would have included dominant pitching, good defense, and just enough offense to come away with a win. They executed that plan to perfection on Friday afternoon, defeating the Blue Jays, 4–0, in the first game of their Wild Card Series matchup. Luis Castillo was in complete control over his 7.1 innings pitched, folk hero Cal Raleigh hit a two-run home run in the first inning, and Andrés Muñoz slammed the door in the ninth.

The formidable Blue Jays offense never threatened to break through against Seattle’s flame-throwing duo, who scattered seven hits throughout the game; Toronto’s only extra-base hit came with two outs in the ninth inning. A pair of two-out base hits put runners on first and second in the third and again in the fifth, but Castillo escaped those jams with ease.

It was a bit of an atypical start for the right-hander, who struck out just five Blue Jays, three of them coming in the seventh inning. Toronto’s batters had the fifth-lowest strikeout rate and the seventh-lowest chase rate in the majors this year; they’re a difficult bunch to whiff. Instead of mowing down the opposition with swings and misses, Castillo pitched to the edges of the strike zone, content to let opposing batters reach for pitches. The result: tons of weak contact. He allowed 22 balls to be put in play with an average exit velocity of just 82.6 mph and only six registering as hard hit.

All that weak contact allowed Castillo to be efficient with his pitch count: He never threw more than 20 pitches in a single frame and cruised into the eighth inning. He ended up throwing 108 pitches in the game, 30% of which were called or swinging strikes. Plunking George Springer in a 1–2 count with one out in the eighth proved to be Castillo’s end, but Muñoz entered and retired Bo Bichette and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. en route to a five-out save. His only blemish was a two-out double by Matt Chapman in the ninth. Read the rest of this entry »

While the postseason drought spanning more than two decades is over, so too is the celebration in Seattle, as the Mariners travel to the other side of the continent to face the slugging, battle-tested Blue Jays, who emerged from baseball’s best division as the top wild card.

Toronto’s lineup is dangerous from top to bottom, stacked with marquee names who have thirteen combined All Star appearances (George Springer has four of his own, Matt Chapman somehow only has one). The group had the fifth-lowest strikeout rate in baseball during the regular season, ranked third in slugging, and were second only to the Dodgers in team wRC+. Except for Raimel Tapia and Whit Merrifield, every member of the Blue Jays’ regular starting lineup posted a wRC+ over 100 on the season, and Merrifield closed the season on a .361/.385/.639 heater. If Lourdes Gurriel Jr.’s hamstring is healed in time for him to be inserted in the lineup, he’s an easy offensive upgrade on Tapia, though he may not have his timing immediately due to his lack of at-bats.

While Toronto’s lineup has undeniable star power, it may have an unexpected fault at its core. While his season, overall, was very good, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is ice cold right now. During the last month of the season he slashed a paltry .235/.290/.390 and struggled with plate discipline. Vladdy’s chase rate during September (40%) was a full ten percentage points higher than his career norm (31%), as he struggled to lay off sliders away from him and well off the plate. Two-pitch Robbie Ray should be a great matchup for Vlad, as he doesn’t have a secondary pitch that moves away from right-handed hitters aside from an unfamiliar changeup. But the Mariners have bullpen weapons that are well-suited to exploit his recent issues in Penn Murfee, Diego Castillo, and Matt Brash, who all have sliders that finish in a spot Guerrero can’t seem to get to right now. Streaky Jays shortstop Bo Bichette has been the polar opposite, second only to Aaron Judge in WAR since the calendar flipped to September, slashing .405/.443/.664 and clubbing 19 extra-base hits during that span and entering postseason play as one of the planet’s most dangerous hitters. Read the rest of this entry »

The life of any top prospect is filled with pressure, but for Jarred Kelenic, that pressure might have been even greater than usual. Being the marquee prospect in a blockbuster trade must put extra weight on a player’s shoulders. For a time, it looked like the Mariners had pulled one over on the New York Mets. Kelenic was ranked fourth overall entering the 2021 season as a 60 FV prospect, and was viewed as one of the first in a wave of young players meant to save the Seattle Mariners from a protracted playoff drought. But the discourse around the trade that sent him to Seattle — in which he, Jay Bruce, Gerson Bautista, Justin Dunn and Anthony Swarzak went to the Mariners while Robinson Canó, Edwin Díaz, and $20 million went to the Mets — has flipped. Kelenic has struggled in his time in the majors, while Díaz has struck out half the batters he’s faced in 2022. Sometimes prospects get the chance to adjust to the big leagues in relative quiet, but Kelenic’s first 400 plate appearances have come with a high level of scrutiny, and his struggles have forced us to reconsider his ceiling as a hitter.

Yet Kelenic has recently made some strides. In 2021, he was bad against breaking balls, posting a .214 wOBA against them. Jumping ahead to 2022, Kelenic’s issues with breaking balls became even more apparent. In the season’s early going, his wOBA fell even further, down to .093. That’s not a passable mark for a quality big league hitter, and Kelenic was sent down in the middle of May. After a few months in the minors, he got another chance in August, but he had barely finished his cup of coffee before being optioned again. Read the rest of this entry »