They say that it’s better to have loved someone dearly, accepting the heartbreak of inevitably losing them, than to have never loved at all. Our close connections to each other and the world around us, no matter how much they’ll hurt in the future, make us human in the present.
Mariners fans have been lovestruck for at least five months, when the baseball world woke up to the reality that Cal Raleigh really is that guy. It’s been a wonderful summer, which was fortunate enough to become a wonderful October. It’s all over now.
On Monday, October 20, Toronto’s George Springer scored a three-run homer in the seventh inning, securing the late-game lead by just a single point. The Mariners tried like hell to catch up, but there wasn’t enough time. The Blue Jays would hold on to win the American League Championship series. The Mariners had to go home, now carrying the agony of a lost opportunity on their shoulders.
“I hate to use the word ‘failure,’ but it’s a failure,” said Raleigh after the game. “What we expected was to get to the World Series and win a World Series. That’s what the bar is and the standard is, and that’s what we want to hold ourselves accountable to.”
Before leaving Toronto in defeat, the Mariners entered the postseason as a hopeful, energized, and unified band of brothers — a complete turnaround from how they started. Lingering cynicism from past seasons and an awful 11-19 record during spring training created expectations for another season of mediocrity. Instead, they blew everyone’s expectations out the window.
While Cal Raleigh’s record-setting offense would capture the headlines, it was a newfound team effort that truly took the Mariners to new heights. Any given player could become Seattle’s hometown hero in any given game. Julio Rodriguez could suddenly go on a hot streak. J.P Crawford could make the stadium erupt with a grand slam. George Kirby could strike out half of the batting roster. There were very few Mariners, at least for a moment, who felt like they had a ceiling on their potential.
Yet the ceiling was always there. It just took the right circumstances, and the right opponent, to make its presence known. The first sign of concern was back in late September when Bryan Woo, the team’s youngest starting pitcher, started feeling a tightness in his chest midgame in Houston. It turned out to be a pectoral injury. Woo, who became invaluable for his fiery fastball and strike-out potential, was suddenly unavailable.
While Woo’s injury was initially described just as “minor inflammation,” it soon became clear that his condition would require a longer recovery than expected. He’d ultimately missed the Mariners’ first postseason series against the Detroit Tigers, and the team was a pitcher short. The remaining starters — Kirby, Bryce Miller, Logan Gilbert, and Luis Castillo — would be pushed to their limits to make up for his absence.
The Mariners had to endure a 15-inning pitching gauntlet against Detroit ace Tarik Skubal, but they survived long enough to win the division series. Woo was looking healthy enough to soon return, but they’d have only a day to prepare for the next opponent: the Toronto Blue Jays.
Toronto’s strength as a team is their ability to string together runs into a full-blown scoring spree. Once someone gets to first base, it feels like everybody after him does the same, and the bases are loaded before you know it. This is the opposite of Seattle’s game plan, which puts trust in big bats like Raleigh and Rodriguez to score on their own.
“Seattle’s offense relies heavily on home runs, solo home runs. Solo home runs are not gonna beat the Toronto Blue Jays,” said former all-star Derek Jeter. “You gotta be able to score in bulk, but they can’t change who they are.”
The series was also a failure of management. Dan Wilson, the Mariners’ manager, had never led a team into the postseason before. His team’s success came in spite of his lack of experience, and unfortunately, Wilson made choices across the series that drew scrutiny from onlookers. His decision to play relief pitcher Eduard Bazardo against Springer in the seventh inning of Game 7, rather than his reliable closer Andrés Muñoz, will be judged, mocked, and argued over for years to come.
In other bad news, the Mariners will likely let go of either Eugenio Suárez or Josh Naylor before next season. The fan favorites were acquired in a trade with Arizona on one-year contracts. They’re now both free agents, and despite Suárez’s historic grand slam in Game 5, his cold batting streak overall and his hefty price tag will likely make his return a hard sell.
And yet, despite all the bummers, this was still an excellent season for the Mariners. Cal Raleigh homered his way into superstardom. We’ll soon have a new banner in the ballpark’s rafters. An entire generation of Mariners fans had their first taste of true October baseball.
If you’re a fan, you’ll have a lot of reasons to look back on this season fondly in the long term. In the short term, however? You have our permission to grieve.
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