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 »

This morning, on your way to your local coffee shop or the train station, you probably passed two guys writhing around on the sidewalk, one screaming “Aaron Judge!” while trying to wrap up his counterpart in a figure-four leg lock; the other, attempting valiantly to squirm out of his predicament and refusing to tap out, shouting “Shohei Ohtani!”

Such is the nature of this year’s AL MVP discourse, the most spirited awards debate since the halcyon days of Mike Trout vs. Miguel Cabrera a decade ago. And that’s appropriate — these are two of the most recognizable names in the sport, both accomplishing things we only see once every few decades, and both doing it in major markets. (I’m framing it this way on purpose in order to provoke a second argument: Is Anaheim really part of the Greater Los Angeles area, or is it something else?)

But they name three MVP finalists, not two, which leaves us a little less than two months from a hilarious television moment: Judge and Ohtani, on MLB Network, awaiting the results of this contentious election while the host runs down the credentials of some joker with no shot at all of taking home the hardware.

So who should that joker be? Read the rest of this entry »

Injuries are always unwelcome, but the pumpkin spice season is perhaps the most unfortunate time of year to lose a player to one. A surprise malady at this point in the season can shut a player out of some, if not all, of the postseason, and with no ability to make trades and playoff eligibility freezing at the beginning of September, it’s especially challenging to fill holes on the big league roster. This weekend featured some particularly bad injury news for playoff teams, as a number of players who can’t be easily replaced saw their postseason outlook take a turn for the worse.

Let’s take stock of what these injuries might mean come October, beginning with the Tampa Bay Rays, who got the worst bit of news. Shane Baz needs Tommy John surgery, and since we’re so late in the season, 2023 is off the table for his return as well. Until this setback, Baz’s recovery from his most recent elbow problem seemed to be going well, and the team had held out hope that they’d be able to get him up to speed enough to at least pitch in relief. With Baz out, the Rays will have to rely more on Tyler Glasnow, who is expected to be activated on Wednesday in his return from a Tommy John surgery of his own.

The bad news in Tampa didn’t stop with Baz. Brandon Lowe’s back problems have ended his 2022 season early. While (hopefully) not as significant as Baz’s injury, Lowe has struggled with back pain for most of the season and recently had a cortisone injection. As with Baz, the hope had been to get him back on the roster in time for the playoffs. Even with his struggles this year, which were due in large part to the aforementioned injury, ZiPS still thinks Lowe’s bat has the most upside of nearly anyone on the team, and the Rays will take a small but significant hit in the postseason projections in his absence. Without Baz and Lowe, ZiPS thinks of the Rays as a .547 team rather than a .553 one, with their solid depth keeping things from being far worse. The full version of ZiPS projects Lowe’s primary replacement, Jonathan Aranda, at a 105 wRC+ for the rest of the season, a significant bump from his 90 wRC+ projection before the season. Read the rest of this entry »

Nobody can accuse the Mariners of skimping on frontline pitching in an effort to end their epic playoff drought. After signing Robbie Ray to a five-year, $115 million deal last winter, they traded a quartet of prospects for Luis Castillo on July 30. Already this was no mere rental, as the 29-year-old righty still has another season under control before free agency. Or rather had another season under control, because on Saturday, the Mariners announced they had agreed to terms with Castillo on a five-year, $108 million extension.

With the ink on the new deal barely dry, Castillo threw five solid innings against the Royals on Sunday, but faltered in the sixth and was charged with the first three runs of what turned out to be a gruesome 11-run rally that three other relievers tried in vain to contain. The Mariners, who led 11-2 before the onslaught, lost 13-12, dropping them to 3-7 on a 10-game road trip from hell, during which they lost series to the Angels, A’s, and Royals, and sent both Eugenio Suárez and Julio Rodríguez — their two most valuable players by WAR — to the injured list, the former with a fractured right middle finger, the latter with a lower back strain. Sunday’s loss dropped the Mariners to 83-69 overall, but fortunately for them, both the Rays (84-69) and Orioles (79-73) lost on Sunday as well, leaving Seattle four games ahead of Baltimore for the final American League Wild Card slot, and half a game behind Tampa Bay for the second slot.

The outing was the third rough one out of the last four for Castillo, who gave up six runs (three earned) to the White Sox on September 7, and four runs in 4.2 innings to the A’s on September 20. Even so, he’s pitched to a 3.34 ERA and 3.12 FIP in 59.1 innings over 10 starts since the trade, and a 3.06 ERA and 3.17 FIP in 144.1 innings overall. He didn’t make his season debut until May 9 due to a bout of shoulder soreness that sidelined him in the abbreviated spring, but among all pitchers with at least 140 innings, his 76 ERA- is 21st in the majors and his 78 FIP- is 12th; regardless of innings, his 3.4 WAR is in a virtual tie for 23rd among all starters. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mariners just wrapped up their most difficult homestand over the last two months of the season, going 4–4 against the White Sox, Braves, and Padres. They entered this stretch with a 99.4% probability of making the postseason, boosted by a three-game sweep of Cleveland during the first weekend of September; if there were going to be an epic collapse, it would have started here. Instead, they pulled off a split against three playoff caliber teams and now have 20 games remaining against teams with records below .500. Their odds of breaking their infamous playoff drought are now marginally better at 99.8%, but they’ve weathered the toughest storm and have clear skies ahead of them as they push toward a Wild Card berth.

The standout performer during this eight-game stretch was Eugenio Suárez. He blasted six homers during the homestand, including two multi-home run efforts, and a massive walk-off shot. The barrage started with a pair of dingers against the White Sox on September 7, the second of which tied the game at six in the bottom of the seventh inning. A couple of days later, Suárez blasted a solo shot off Max Fried to give the Mariners a 2–0 lead over Atlanta.

The next day, he hit another pair of homers, with the second being the most dramatic of the bunch. After the Braves had stormed back and scored five runs in the top of the ninth inning to take a 7–6 lead, Julio Rodríguez launched a 117-mph solo homer to tie the game in the bottom half. With two outs in the inning, Suárez stepped in and finished off Kenley Jansen and the Braves with a game-winning home run to left center.

He wasn’t finished either; on Wednesday, he hit his sixth home run of the homestand, part of the opening salvo of an eventual 6–1 victory over the Padres.

Suárez’s offensive onslaught isn’t limited to the last eight games either. Since the beginning of August, he’s hit 15 homers and slashed .250/.352/.625 (178 wRC+) in 39 games. In that same period, only Aaron Judge has been able to match his home run output.

Since 2018, Suárez leads the major leagues in homers — one ahead of Judge — with 160. This recent hot streak has helped him match a career high in WAR with 4.3, and he broke the 30 home run threshold for the fourth time in five years (with the shortened 2020 season as the lone exception). Suárez has always been prone to hot and cold stretches, and this latest peak is coming at the right time for the Mariners. Read the rest of this entry »

It’ll still be a few months before we see whether Julio Rodríguez wins the American League Rookie of the Year award, but today we got a glimpse of baseball 15 years into the future. As reported by MLB.com’s Jesse Sanchez and ESPN’s Jeff Passan, the Seattle Mariners and Rodríguez have come to terms on a huge long-term contract extension, one that would run to the late 2030s.

Passan ran down the details of the deal, and it’s a complicated one.

THREAD: There’s a lot to digest on Julio Rodríguez’s extension with Seattle, per ESPN sources. The deal could be for 8, 13, 16 or 18 years. It guarantees Rodriguez $210 million. If it maxes out, it will be the largest ever: $470 million. The details are important. Here they are.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) August 26, 2022

Read the rest of this entry »