The Seattle Mariners find themselves on their heels entering Game 2 of the 2025 American League Division Series against the Detroit Tigers. Having lost the most on-paper winnable game of the series in 11 innings last night, they now must win three of four, with the reigning (and presumptive repeat) Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal taking the mound for the Tigers in Seattle tonight. But hey, if the Tigers can win the game with their worst odds, why can’t the Mariners win theirs? Fun fact: in two
of the three ALDS that the Mariners have won, they dropped the first game.
If you’re looking for more on Game 1, Ryan Blake had the recap and I posted some additional thoughts this morning.
Pitching Matchup
As noted, the Tigers will hand the ball to Tarik Skubal, the best pitcher in baseball. He’s kind of a spiritual Mariner in his profile: heavy use of his fastballs with pinpoint command. What takes him from that to the elite level he’s sustained for two and a half seasons is his changeup, which he controls better than someone should be able to, and pairs perfectly with the fastballs, making it all-but-impossible not to cheat on the fastball or else get caught in between.
As you’ll hear approximately a million times during the broadcast, Skubal is an alum of Seattle University, the only Division I school to offer him a scholarship. So he’s returning to familiar grounds in the Emerald City. But familiarity breeds contempt, and I suspect he’s even more eager to beat the Mariners than you’d expect for a postseason game. They handed him two of his six losses this season, tagging him for seven runs in 10.2 innings.
The Mariners will turn to their rock, Luis Castillo, who Kate profiled this afternoon. As a rock gets weathered over time, Castillo has evolved as a pitcher, no longer the changeup maven he was in his heyday with the Reds. He’ll still pull out the pitch occassionally, but the Tigers are much more likely to see a heavy dose of four-seamers and sliders. This has been the right call for Castillo, but the tradeoff has been that the four-seamer is more vulnerable to fly balls, and thus, home runs. That explains the Mariners’ decision to bump him up to Game 2, even though he’s probably not the team’s second-best available starter. This gives him a chance to pitch at the home-run-supressing T-Mobile Park, where he sports a 2.80 ERA since joining the Mariners, as compared to his 4.24 ERA on the road.
Lineups
The Tigers roll out the same lineup as yesterday, headlined by Kerry Carpenter, Riley Greene, and Spencer Torkelson. The return of Colt Keith from the IL for the ALDS has given them an additional decent bat, but it’s still a lineup that lacks the depth of the Mariners’.
For their part, the Mariners will shift things around a bit to account for facing Skubal the Southpaw. The big change is that they’ve swapped out the lefty Dominic Canzone at DH in favor of Mitch Garver. While Garver has disappointed relative to expectations when he signed the biggest position-player free-agent deal of Jerry Dipoto’s tenure running the team, Garver is still good against lefties, sporting a batting line 7% better than league average. The other change is that lefty Josh Naylor, who hit cleanup yesterday, will slide down in the lineup behind the switch-hitting Jorge Polanco and the right-handed Eugenio Suárez. But it’s a win to have Naylor available at all, as his wife, singer Chantel Collado is due to give birth to their first child at any moment.
Read more about the lineups in Jake’s series preview. (And stay for the Kate’s excellent riff on Frank Grimes.)
How to Watch and Listen
First pitch: 5:03 PT
TV: FS1 with Adam Amin, Adam Wainwright, A.J. Pierzysnki and Tom Verducci
Radio: Seattle Sports (710 AM) with Rick Rizzs, Aaron Goldsmith and Gary Hill Jr.
For those without cable, YouTube TV offers a free trial for new subscribers. Fox One is also offering a seven-day free trial. A day pass for Sling TV is $4.99.
This Day in Mariners History
2001: The Mariners set the American League record with their 115th win of the season, a 6-2 win over Texas featuring home runs by Bret Boone and John Olerud as well as two triples by Mark McLemore.
