The battle of inverted records. After getting blown out in two of three games in Toronto and blowing a lead in the one game they had a fighting chance to win, the Mariners go on to play an actually good team in Boston to finish up this east coast road trip. The good news: games start before most people will finish work, so you probably won’t have to follow them too closely. There might be reason to watch, though: the Mariners are reportedly calling up slugging outfielder Lazaro Montes, who possesses
such raw power from the left side he could turn the Pesky Pole into a pretzel. Please, a small treat for the long-suffering Mariners fan.
Credit to the Red Sox, who looked dead in the water earlier in the season but have gone on some well-timed hot streaks. They now trail the Yankees by just four games for the top AL Wild Card spot, although the Yankees just took three out of four from them in a highly-publicized weekend series that probably had Rob Manfred dancing barefoot through fields of daisies (although the series finale didn’t come without controversy).
The Mariners, who looked limp and punchless against the Blue Jays this weekend, won’t come in with the same firepower, but the Red Sox will have some additions to their armory anyway. Boston has recently gotten some key additions back to their lineup prior to this series: outfielder Roman Anthony is back after missing most of the season with a wrist sprain, and Trevor Story rejoins the lineup after being out most of the year with a sports hernia injury. Both turned in multi-hit efforts in Sunday’s series finale, showing no signs of rust after their long layoffs. How nice for them.
It must be nice for [one google later] Red Sox manager Chad Tracy to be able to pencil in Roman Anthony’s name in the leadoff spot again after months of filling in that spot with the likes of Nick Sogard or Jahmai Jones — fine part-time players but not exactly anchors of a lineup. Speaking of lineup anchors, consider this your reminder that Adley Rutschman is a Red Sox now, which is just weird for those of us old enough to remember #PlayBadlyForAdley as a Twitter hashtag. The Red Sox are also enjoying a late-season surge from a pair of players who were ice-cold the last time the Mariners saw the Sox in June: Wilyer Abreu, rocking a 170 wRC+ in August after being below replacement level in the first two months of the season; and outfielder Jarren Duran, who has been refried buttcheeks most of the season but has hit his stride over the past two weeks. Must be nice.
Probable Pitchers
Updated Stuff+ Explainer
- Stuff+ scores for Mariners starters
From a previous series preview:
Payton Tolle raced through the Red Sox farm system last year. After being drafted in 2024, he made his pro debut the following spring and was eventually pitching in the big leagues by the end of the season. His fastball is one of the best in all of baseball; he throws hard from the left side, the pitch has tremendous carry at the top of the zone, and his 6’ 6” frame provides a ton of extension down the mound. His secondary pitches are still a work in progress but his plus plus fastball has enough quality that he can get by without a breaking ball or offspeed pitch. If he ever develops a consistent secondary weapon or two, watch out.
The Mariners scored three runs off Tolle back in June; he pitched six innings in Seattle, allowing six hits and two walks while striking out two.
Sonny Gray has a decent shot at becoming the first AL starter to win 20 games in a season since Justin Verlander did it back in 2019. Wins are obviously an old school pitching statistic, but it’s still a remarkable milestone, especially in this era of smaller, more intense workloads for pitchers. After being acquired from the Cardinals this past offseason, Gray has become an anchor for the Red Sox pitching staff. His arsenal has shifted a bit since he was a young ace for the Athletics a decade ago; he still has his signature curveball but his primary breaking ball is a nasty sweeper that has been nearly unhittable this year. His repertoire is deep and varied, his command is still excellent, and he’s using all of his years of experience to keep batters off balance.
Patrick Sandoval was a promising starter for the Angels before he blew out his elbow in 2024, undergoing Tommy John surgery and missing all of the next season. He signed with the Red Sox last year to rehab after his surgery and only just returned to the big league mound in July. His best pitch is an excellent changeup that keeps right-handed batters at bay. His slider is also above average and that’s now the pitch he’s throwing as his primary weapon. His fastballs aren’t anything special; the velocity on them matches what he was throwing before his surgery, but they’re getting crushed by opposing batters right now.
The Big Picture:
Oh, we’re still doing these? No, in the words of Bartleby the Scrivener, I would prefer not to. Instead, I would prefer to tell you about Herman Melville, the author of Bartleby (and a little book you might have heard of called Moby Dick), and the intense, complicated relationship between him and another author you were probably forced to read in high school English class, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Melville, 16 years Hawthorne’s junior, was absolutely enthralled by the extremely intellectual, extremely introverted Hawthorne, who used to literally hide in bushes to avoid people (relatable, my socially awkward king!). The two enjoyed a rich friendship until Melville basically scared Hawthorne off, once writing him that he wished for a magic supply of paper so he could write down every single thought in his head and send them all off to Hawthorne, his “divine magnet.” Apparently being a divine magnet was a little too much for the repressed Hawthorne, who ghosted him, leaving Melville heartbroken for the rest of his life. Anyway, I’m sure this story relates to the 2026 Mariners somehow.
