With the Mariners’ recent penchant for leaving their playoff destiny unresolved until the last possible moment, this final series of the regular season against the Dodgers always loomed large on September’s
schedule. Well, thanks to Seattle’s scorching hot finish to the season, this series actually has very little bearing on the final standings. Los Angeles claimed the NL West yesterday and can’t climb any higher than the third seed in the NL playoff picture, so these games are meaningless to them. The M’s can technically claim the top seed in the AL, but it would require them to pass both the Yankees and Blue Jays in the standings, and both of those teams hold the tiebreaker over Seattle. So, instead of a tension-filled weekend against one of the best teams in the NL, it’ll be a fairly innocuous three-game set between two teams getting ready for a long postseason journey.
Instead of the absolute juggernaut we all thought the Dodgers were going to be at the start of the year, they’ve actually had a rough up-and-down season. Granted, their playoff aspirations were never in any real danger, but they’re on track to finish with their lowest win total since 2018 and there were real questions about their ability to claim their 12th division title in the last 13 years. The reasons for their unexpected struggles are many — injuries wreaked havoc on their pitching staff and their superstars are feeling their age — but recently it’s been their bullpen that has absolutely failed them. The Dodgers’ bullpen has posted a 5.45 ERA in September, 26th in baseball, and things have gotten so bad that Clayton Kershaw and Roki Sasaki made relief appearances on Thursday.
It’s hard to find any faults in a lineup headlined by three sure-fire Hall of Famers. Shohei Ohtani’s outrageous accomplishments have sort of become normalized in baseball’s consciousness, but it’s worthwhile to stop and really appreciate what he’s doing. A year after becoming the first player to reach the 50/50 landmark, he’s blasted another 50+ home runs this year while working to get back up to speed on the mound where he’s posted a 2.87 ERA in 14 starts. Mookie Betts’s offensive decline is a little bit more concerning, but he’s been hitting a lot more like himself since the calendar turned to August. The back half of the Dodgers lineup is solid, if unspectacular. Andy Pages is the one standout; he’s enjoyed a pretty big breakout in his second season in the big leagues.
Probable Pitchers
During a year filled with injuries to their star-studded pitching staff, Emmet Sheehan has been an unheralded contributor for the Dodgers. He missed all of last season after undergoing Tommy John surgery in 2023 and he’s been absolutely fantastic in return to the mound this year. His stuff and command have taken steps forward post-surgery; his strikeout-to-walk ratio is now an excellent 3.91 and his strikeout rate is a hair over 30%. His best pitch is a hard gyro slider that earns plenty of swings and misses. His changeup is also an excellent pitch, though it excels at generating weak contact rather than earning whiffs.
Tyler Glasnow has never pitched a full season in his career; he has never qualified for the ERA title and he set a career-high for starts last year with 22. A long list of injuries has kept him from contributing a full workload, but when he’s healthy, the innings he does pitch are extremely high quality. His pair of breaking balls are fantastic weapons and he added an excellent sinker to his pitch mix last year to help him keep batters off his four-seamer. He’s dealt with some command issues this year — his walk rate is up over five points from last season — but he’s managed to work around those extra baserunners because his strikeout rate is still elite.
Last week, Clayton Kershaw announced he would be retiring at the end of this season. Since the Dodgers won’t be using him out of the starting rotation during their postseason run (unless emergency strikes), this start in Seattle will be the last of his career. As he’s aged into his twilight, the core of what made him so dominant for so long hasn’t really changed. He still features two absolutely filthy breaking balls, and even though his fastball has deteriorated with age, the secondary weapons are so good, he’s still finding plenty of success. The one new wrinkle has been a rarely thrown splitter that he introduced last year, giving him another option to use against right-handed batters.
The news on Bryan Woo’s pectoral was as good as it could have been, but it’s still unclear how the team will handle him during the final weekend of the season. It’s possible they’ll give him an abbreviated start on Sunday, just to keep him in rhythm before the long break before the ALDS, or they could opt to shut him down ahead of the playoffs and treat Sunday as an extended bullpen game.
The Big Picture:
Technically, the Mariners are still in play for the top seed in the American League, but they’d need to gain two games against both the Yankees and Blue Jays to get there. If Seattle wins two games this weekend, that would mean both New York and Toronto would need to get swept. If Seattle sweeps, then both New York and Toronto would need to lose twice. The AL Wild Card race is still unsettled too, which will have some implications for the potential opponent the M’s will face in the ALDS. Rooting interests this weekend:
- The Orioles over the Yankees
- The Rays over the Blue Jays
- The Tigers and Red Sox play each other this weekend. Seattle’s rooting interests aren’t super clear, but the winner of this series will likely end up as the fifth seed which means they’d end up on the other side of the playoff bracket from the M’s — root for the team you don’t want to face in the ALDS.
- Rangers over Guardians for maximum chaos. There some seeding implications here too as the winner of the AL Central will be seeded on the M’s side of the playoff bracket. The Guardians currently hold the division but they could slip behind the Tigers if things break Detroit’s way.
- Angels over Astros for schadenfreude
