If that was a playoff preview, the Mariners are ready for October

The Mariners looked like a complete team down in Houston—and one built for the Postseason.

These games are so good when they mean so much.

They’re even better when the Mariners win them. All of them.

With everything on the line, the division title they’ve been chasing for a quarter-century there for the taking, the team that’s twirled it in their fingers for most of a decade on the other side and the chance to move this whole franchise a big step forward, the Mariners did what they don’t normally do.

They excelled. They succeeded. They won and won big.

Three games vs. the Astros in Houston, the last series on the last road trip of the year—they loomed.

People don’t really circle series on physical baseball calendars anymore, if they ever did, but you’d have circled this one before the 2024 season ended if circling important series on sports schedules was an interest of yours.

Or maybe it’d subtly glow like a clue in a video game.

Either way, what stood as a crucial series for more than a year took on added importance when the Mariners and Astros entered the three-game set tied atop the standings.

This was playoff baseball before the playoffs. We already knew this series would have a big influence on what October looks like, as far as how many games the Mariners will have to win and where those games will be played.

Now we know, if this is what those games are like, the Mariners are ready to play them.

It started with the two teams going ace for ace. Our best vs. theirs, as it were.

It looked like how these games are supposed to look, and it was decided the way these types of contests, in today’s game, often are—by somebody sockin’ some dingers.

On Friday evening, the Mariners socked some dingers. Hunter Brown was good—because Hunter Brown is good—and the Mariners took him deep twice.

The Julio shot was a tone-setter. It felt like what Cal did in Toronto.

This was what the series was gonna be like.

And then it was.

Up and down the lineup are guys who can pop one in a big spot. When they have their “A” lineup going—Robles in right, Polo at second, Dom at DH—every single guy can run into one and change a game, if not a season.

After this year is over, there’s going to be a lot of talk about how such a special season happened. Success has a thousand fathers, after all.

They finally pushed their chips in, the starting pitching got it done, bringing Polo back was shrewd, Dan Wilson did not kill them.

None of it matters if Cal Raleigh doesn’t have one of the greatest seasons in Mariners history—and one of the best seasons in baseball history for a catcher.

It was perfect then, here, the scene-setter for October, that Cal played a leading role.

Ken Griffey Jr. is one of the most beloved and iconic home run hitters of all time. That he managed to reach national stardom well beyond the world of baseball while wearing a Seattle Mariners uniform is an incredible feat.

Cal supplanting him—The Kid—as the organization’s all-time single-season home run kind might be an even more unbelievable one.

That’s come with a little national stardom of his own.

As such, the Mariners head into the Postseason with someone they know is their Dude. The Mariners don’t always have a Dude, certainly not to this level.

The last time the M’s had a position player with a nine-win season was ARod in 2000 and their last MVP was, of course, Junior in 1997. Cal will attempt to do what neither of them did in Seattle, advance past the ALCS.

As those guys showed, a single star can’t propel a ball club on their own, and even a few Hall of Famers don’t always do it.

You have to have a complete team, and the Mariners are closer to that ideal than they have been in a long time, helped a great deal by their starting rotation providing a persistently higher floor than is afforded to most of the league.

They haven’t quite been themselves this year, not to the level they and we would expect, but the Houston series showed things can change quickly—and if they do, Seattle can dominate.

The Mariners had their big dogs lined up for this series like they would—and probably will—for the ALDS.

The results: 3-0, 17 IP, 9 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 1 HR, 2 BB, 18 SO.

At’ll play.

Tough to lose when your starting pitching does that. Tell ‘em, Carlos.

“I think we did try our best,” Carlos Correa told reporters after the Mariners finished the sweep. “They were just better.”

The Mariners are better than the Houston Astros. They may be better than most or all of the American League.

But that doesn’t matter in October—at least, it isn’t everything. The best team doesn’t always win.

“The playoffs are a coin flip,” folks often say. And there’s a lot of truth to that. After 162 games, cruel randomness can choose to sit its rotund backside on the scale we’ve somehow decided to play a baseball game on.

The reason the playoffs are viewed as random is because 1.) They often are and 2.) They come down to key moments.

You win divisions when players do the thing they’re supposed to do at the rate you expect or hope them to do. They may not always make the play, but they do at a better rate than the guys on the other side—when you let it play out over six months.

You win championships when players do the thing they’re supposed to do right there and then—in the few moments they get to show they can and will.

You don’t get another chance if you screw up, you don’t get to prove that you usually don’t do that—at least not before some time out on the golf course.

Ask Robbie Ray.

As much as I didn’t want it to, the memory of that moment—perhaps the single worst in franchise history—felt like it was pulsating in my brain on Saturday evening. It was so familiar.

Runners on first and second, one out, Mariners up two, Carlos Correa at the plate.

One pop fly into the Crawford Boxes was all it’d take. From having the division lead and the tiebreaker in hand to, potentially, a backbreaking walk-off there, an inevitable despondent dud the following day and the entire season looking different.

All it takes is one play. One AB. One catch.

That was the moment of the series. And probably the season.

The lasting moment for me, though, was probably the next day.

My wife and I have been out of town for a bit, just getting home Saturday. We’d been tending to a family matter and, as a result, were pretty beat up and worn down.

A late-afternoon lap around Green Lake helped, with the autumn light and a little crisper air. Grinnell enjoyed all the unwitting squirrels, as well.

We always think we have more time than we do, so we ended up being on our bike ride home during the first two innings. Not a big deal, since we both enjoy baseball on the radiomwhether it’s on a bike ride like this or at the ballgame itself.

But my wife didn’t put the game on when leaving Green Lake, only I did.

As we got closer to home, still cruising along, I got my headphones case out of my pocket and reached to hand the other unused pod to her.

“Bases loaded. Nobody out.”

We both celebrated the bases-loaded walk to Vic.

But after that, after that, we went nuts. Er, I went nuts.

Rick’s call on the J.P. Crawford grand slam felt, at least as it was playing out, almost subdued.

Part of it, surely, was that he really couldn’t tell if it was gonna go. It landed a few rows deep but Houston’s Houston and J.P. did really get under that one, the ump cam showing it damn near disappear into the rafters.

The other part, perhaps, was that it seemed too good to be true. A grand slam—here? This game? This moment?

Yeah.

If you live on or around 83rd Ave NW and were disturbed by a deranged man’s obnoxious hoot at approximately 4:30 p.m., my apologies.

This team has it all. And, more than ever, it feels like they could play for it all.

The ability to hit for power, the MVP, the starting pitching, the proven propensity to meet the moment—they have everything it takes to compete in October.

Now let’s watch them punch their ticket to get there.

There’s only one question now—one champagne party or two?

Go M’s.