Back to reality

For the Mariners, the road trip was probably worse than reality. In a good way.

We love the sport of baseball, don’t we folks? One week, it feels like the Mariners could play and beat anyone, that maybe they’re the favorites to win the pennant.

The next, the universe retorts with the road trip equivalent of “Are you out of your goddamn mind? The Seattle Mariners? The pennant?!”

Baseball has a lot of adages. You have 30 teams, 162 games a season, you’re gonna get a lot of adages and due to the sample, you’re going to get a good deal of accuracy therein.

“Every team wins 50 games, every team loses 50 games—it all depends on what your club does in the other 62” and things of that nature.

Another solid one, for baseball and for life: things are never as good as they seem at their best and they’re never as bad as they seem at their worst.

The Mariners received an old-fashioned East Coast swing ass-kicking. It happens.

You screw up against a not-great team in the Orioles and then you face two clubs built to gun it in a National League a clear step ahead of the Junior Circuit—it’ll look like that.

The Mariners will spend Thursday back home, off work, in the most beautiful city in the world. Can’t hurt.

Shall we riff? Let’s riff.

The Phillies are good

This Philadelphia Phillies team is a beast. That’s a ball club that’s been aiming for greatness for the better part of a half-decade and has a roster that looks the part. Even their old acquisitions, acquisitions from an entire other administration, can still bang.

They got J.T. Realmuto the same offseason they shipped J.P. Crawford to Seattle. He’s not the player he once was but he’s good enough to swing a game by ambushing a get-me-over first-pitch fastball from Matt Brash.

Since the Phillies acquired him in 2019, he’s been the best catcher in the game by fWAR. And he wasn’t even close to their biggest acquisition that winter—that would be Bryce Harper, signed to a 13-year deal with a $25 million AAV that sure as hell feels pretty good for all parties involved now.

A couple middling seasons and a lot of angst later, the Phillies pushed on instead of pulling back, successfully recruiting Dave Dombrowski to take over the December before the 2021 season.

His first full offseason, before 2022, they sign Kyle Schwarber and Nick Castellanos and it’s off to the races. Trea Turner, signed the following offseason, would be better in actuall footraces but the former duo can certainly bop it.

Imagine Schwarber, now honing in on a Hall of Fame trajectory, on that contract (or a little more) in Seattle since 2022. Would be nice.

On top of all that, the lineup isn’t even the strength of their team.

They have the best starting rotation in the sport. It’s not even close. By fWAR, they’re 2.5 wins clear of the the next closest NL team. Their fourth-most valuable starter, Ranger Suarez, has been the equal to Bryan Woo in 30 fewer innings.

It didn’t help, either, the Mariners faced three lefty starters—not only guys who will dominate on their own, but by nature of their handedness, draw out the worst bats on the M’s.

Just, good God that was rough.

The Mariners got the full experience, the business end of a roster more complete than any in the American League.

I used to think I wanted the Mariners to be the Pacific Northwest version of the San Francisco Giants. And maybe I’ve mentioned it before, but that’s changed—more-so who personifies the ethos than the ethos itself—and it’s now a West Coast version of the Philadelphia Phillies.

They try like hell, they have a standard—and they play to it. You do that over and over and over again, you’re gonna be pretty good.

But you look at all they’ve done and it doesn’t include a title.

Them’s the breaks, that’s the Postseason. It’s why when you build a “consistent winner” you do really have to do the “winner” part because even when you do that, repeatedly, there are no guarantees.

Rotation’s gotta be better

Here’s one of my least favorite tropes in the world of baseball discourse: “It doesn’t matter what X, Y and Z do because if and A, B and C aren’t performing, it really doesn’t matter.”

It tends to paper over genuine issues and obscure how valuable it can be to replace players who are real negative contributors and with even neutral guys (or better!).

Baseball’s a game of margins and inefficiencies.

But you can be as clever as prime Billy Beane and if Barry Zito, Mark Mulder and Tim Hudson put up the type of numbers the Mariners’ starting pitchers did on this trip, it’s not going to matter at all.

These guys aren’t those guys, either. Not right now.

Here are those numbers:

Specifically, most recently, here’s the 2025 season’s first complete turn of the planned Opening Day rotation:

• Bryan Woo vs. Baltimore: 6 IP, R, ER, 2 BB, 8 K

• George Kirby vs. Baltimore: 4.2 IP, 12 H, 7 R, 7 ER, 3 BB, 4 K

• Logan Gilbert vs. Philadelphia: 2 IP, 9 H, 6 R, 6 ER, K

• Bryce Miller vs. Philadelphia: 5 IP, 4 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 2 BB, 4 K

• Luis Castillo vs. Philadelphia: 4 IP, 10 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 2 BB, 2 K

Logan Gilbert and George Kirby are supposed to be a couple of the game’s best starters by now. Castillo is the team’s highest-paid player.

It’s a tough trip. These are tough teams. It’s a tough time of year, especially to be a pitcher.

But that’s the game. If you’re one of those guys you pitch like one of those guys all the way through to October.

Injuries have been big, obviously.

It’s easy to imagine, once the end of the season comes around, thinking “Welp, looking forward to seeing what they can do next year with full healthy seasons from Logan and George.”

And yeah. Sure.

But that’s why you have to gun it when you have the type of rotation the Mariners had in 2023 and 2024. It’s hard to achieve and you can’t count on it forever.

Honestly, probably the most encouraging development from the road trip—and especially the series in Philadelphia—was the Bryce Miller start on Tuesday. It wasn’t anything to freak out about but that was closer to the Miller we saw last year than anything we’ve seen since.

Could be a big factor down the stretch.

It’s all still right in front of you—or most of it

Easily, easily the funniest part of yesterday was how, before you could even think to check the Astros’ score, their game was already effectively over.

Six first inning runs off Framber Valdez made the impending sweep in Philly not feel all that awful.

Had the Mariners played merely competent on the road trip, they’d be in incredible position. Though, had the Astros done the same over the last week, the M’s would be in a world of trouble.

If things were different, they’d be different.

As is—the cool breeze off the Puget Sound is a little crisper, the sunsets behind it have put some distance between themselves and the north end of the Olympic Mountains and your Seattle Mariners are probably 50/50 at worst to win the American League West.

They will make the Postseason in some form. Almost certainly.

(Don’t you dare, Mariners.)

It’s a respectable spot to be and it makes for a special time to follow a baseball team every day with all your heart.

I don’t know how much more all our hearts can take from the Mentos-in-Coke combination that is Dan Wilson and the handful of players who shouldn’t be on this roster but, hey, we’re going to find out.

No matter what, the next six weeks will, well, transpire. They’re going to happen. Game 162 is coming. And every day between now and then, things get more serious. More tense.

More exuberant and more heartbreaking.

Like the header says, it’s all still right in front of them.

Well, the top two seeds may not be there anymore. Maybe?

We’re in kind of a “Welp, we might catch up to you later—text me where you’re at” situation with Detroit and Toronto, so it looks like the Mariners will start the Postseason in the three-game Wild Card round.

May as well do it without being a Wild Card and with three home games.

The goal for avoiding that round is to, of course, try to duck the whims of small samples and short series. Make October a little less of a coin flip.

Well, it cuts both ways. The randomness of October can be an equalizer—and an updraft.

Winning the West for the first time in a quarter-century and following it up with three games (ideally two) in a sold out T-Mobile Park, louder than it’s been…ever? Sounds fun.

Could slingshot you forward pretty good.

Let’s do it.