The best lineup in baseball hits (on) the road.
I wrote last week about the Mariners’ home field advantage in the ALDS. Their 100-62 record at home the last two seasons was third best in MLB. They seemed to find an edge within the confines of the uber-suppressive T-Mobile Park. Maybe it didn’t feel that way as they slogged through 15 innings of history on Friday. But the Tigers, like most visitors this year, couldn’t figure it out, either.
The Mariners haven’t been nearly as good on the road. They
went 39-42 in 2025, after going 36-45 in 2024. Most teams are worse on the road, but that’s the second largest discrepancy in MLB the last two years. It got so bad that “the Mariners can’t win on the road” became a persistent narrative, following a pair of “season-ending” trips in August.
This is relevant now as the Mariners will not have home field advantage against the Blue Jays in the ALCS (nor in the World Series, should they advance). They’ll play two games in Toronto beginning Sunday, before three in Seattle, before returning to Toronto for what remains.
Are the Mariners doomed?
Not quite. Their lackluster record in away games this year seemed more a “feature” of their wild inconsistency, rather than an inherent… road block. In fact, the Mariners thrived in away games early in the season, going 14-4 in a stretch that spanned three trips in April and May. They also capped the year with a 7-2 record in their final three series away.
It is true, though, that the Mariners are a fundamentally different team on the road. We can see this with park factors. T-Mobile Park was, once again, the toughest place to hit in 2025 with a park factor of 90. This means there was about 10% less offense (via wOBA) in Mariners’ home games than road games (and 19% fewer runs scored).
In the past, Seattle’s park factor has generally represented a horrid home offense and a fine road offense. That’s not the case this year. The Mariners finished 2025 with a nearly passable .306 wOBA at home (22nd) and an outstanding .336 wOBA on the road (2nd). Looking at just active rosters (to conveniently erase the days of Leody Tavares), the Mariners hold MLB’s top ranked road offense with a .342 wOBA. It’s the org’s best ever road offense since Fangraphs began tracking in 2002. They are very, very good — arguably the best in MLB — when away from their magenta-splashed House of Horrors.
The plot below shows how their home and road offense changed throughout 2025. They were fantastic on the road for most of the season, while hovering near average at home. They hit well everywhere by year’s end.
This dynamic was true across the board: 13 of 14 batters on the Mariners’ active roster posted a league average wOBA or better on the road in 2025 (the only holdout being Harry Ford). They whiffed less, struck out less, and were more likely to be rewarded for good contact while away from Seattle.
Cal Raleigh lead the way, of course, with 32 of his 60 homers coming on the road.
And while Julio Rodríguez’s reputation has been defined mostly by time of year, his production on the road was superior all season, with a .363 wOBA on the road in the first half and a .422 wOBA in the second half. (I recommend this post from Luke Arkins, who discusses what the “second-half Julio” narrative missed in 2025.)
Where I really want to focus your attention is on Eugenio Suárez. I was somewhat skeptical Suárez was a good fit for the Mariners at the trade deadline. I pointed out at the time that he’d out-performed his expected results in Arizona in a trend that seemed unlikely to continue. And, well, Suárez quickly declined after joining the team, with a 91 wRC+ in 220 plate appearance.
But the splits tell a different story. Suárez was awful with the Mariners at T-Mobile Park this year, with a .208 wOBA in 120 PAs. On the road, however, he posted a .389 wOBA in 100 PAs — third best on the team, behind only Raleigh and Dominic Canzone. It wasn’t a surprise to see him go 2-for-7 with a homer and a walk in the ALDS in Detroit, while going 0-for-14 at home. The peripherals don’t necessarily look a ton better, but he still seems to have just enough of whatever it takes to knock a few homers on the road.
With Geno — and with everyone, really — the Mariners bring a truly great lineup from top-to-bottom into Toronto.
They’ll need it.
While the Mariners gained about 29 points of wOBA in away games on offense, they gave back about 46 points on defense. Their wOBA advantage dropped from +25 points at home to +8 on the road, or a penalty of about 17 points.
Why?
The Mariners pitched poorly on the road in 2025. Their 4.34 FIP in away games this year ranked 21st in MLB, compared to a 3.63 FIP at home (6th). The only pitcher to truly excel on the road in 2025 was Andrés Muñoz (in fact, he was even better away). George Kirby, Bryan Woo and Gabe Speier were each solid outside T-Mobile Park, but everyone else was league average or worse.
Does this mix of all-hitting and less-pitching work for the Mariners?
Sort of. Their 25-point wOBA advantage at home ranked eighth in MLB in 2025. Their 8-point wOBA advantage on the road ranked seventh in MLB (or roughly equivalent, in a relative sense). In other words, the Mariners weren’t bad on the road, so much as most teams take a penalty as the visitors.
We can see their road struggles were largely isolated to August. They finished 2025 with their best road month of the season.
That’s all to say, I don’t see a potential… road block as the Mariners open the ALCS in Toronto. They are surely a different team (and maybe a worse team), with an all-hitting and less-pitching approach. But they are still a good team and one certainly capable of returning the series to Seattle with a win.
Of course, this is all written from the perspective of the Mariners using numbers pulled from a 162-game season against a mix of opponents and venues. That’s not how the ALCS will work. The Blue Jays were tremendously successful at Rogers Centre in 2025 at 54-27 (the best home record in the AL). They too have splits, and they too will hit better and pitch worse when the series is in Toronto.
The Mariners played the Blue Jays twice this year. They beat them in Toronto. They got swept in Seattle.
