The Seattle Mariners have made the extremely long trek down to Atlanta, Georgia hoping to plug the holes of their leaky ship while the Braves are trying to play to spoiler for the potential playoff teams left on their schedule.
It wasn’t that long ago the Mariners had fairly comfortable lead in the AL Wild Card, and even was leading the AL West with a comfortable 94.9% chance of making the playoffs. Since August 12th however, the Mariners are 7-14 in their last 21 games, have 3.5 games back of Houston
in the AL West and now look up and find four different teams breathing down their neck for the last AL Wild Card spot. Seattle enters Friday night holding just a 1.5 game lead over the Texas Rangers and a 2.0 game lead over the Kansas Cith Royals and the Tampa Bay Rays. Baseball happens quickly. They’ve come all the way down south in hopes of re-righting the ship against a disappointing Braves team.
For the Braves, the 2025 season has become much more about individual story lines, individual player performances, health, an ever-changing roster, new faces, and trying to build any momentum going into 2026. Their rotation has stabilized a bit with Hurston Waldrep and Joey Wentz pitching well above expectations and the offense has shown more life in the second half than it did in the first, but still, they’re just 5-8 in their last 13 games and are just trying to get it to the finish line.
Armed with a brand new shortstop in Ha-Seong Kim, who hit a go-ahead 3-run homer in his second game on the roster, and their ace Chris Sale who’s back from injury and pitching Friday night, the Braves are just trying to get a glimpse of the team they hope to have for 2026 before deciding what moves need to be made to the roster this winter.
Opposing Chris Sale tonight for the Mariners is 6’6” Logan Gilbert who enters the game with a 3.73 ERA spread over 102 innings pitched in 2025.
