Three nights in Houston.
The 2025 Mariners have frustrated at times because they are a baseball team. No team in MLB history has won all 162. But they are a damn fine squad, and a 3-3 finish would get them to 90 wins for the third time in five years. They’ve gotten here thanks to a repeated vanquishing of their demons and, I hope, yours.
They took the season series from the A’s, who wrestled away the last postseason spot from the Mariners in 2018, despite the most commanding position they’d been in for
years. Logan Gilbert set his career high in strikeouts in one of those games. Twice they swept the decaying husk of the Anaheim Angels, who spoiled the Mariners chance at a miracle playoff spot in 2021. They added on another three wins to take the season series 9-4. George Kirby and Bryan Woo set career highs in strikeouts in two of those games. They won a series in Fenway Park, home of meltdowns and blown opportunities. Emerson Hancock set his career high in strikeouts in one of those games. They won every series against the Rangers, who won the division in 2016 with a +8 run differential and then stole Seattle’s playoff spot in 2023.
But this decade’s Mariners’ fate has always tangled up with the Astros. This weekend’s three-gamer seemed destined to be the biggest regular season series even before the two teams came into it tied in the standings and tied in their season series.
It was reasonable to be nervous coming in. Enron Field has been a house of horrors for the Mariners at times. They lost every game there in 2019, and all but one in 2020. They were gobsmacked in the 2022 ALDS, with probably the single most devastating at-bat in Mariners history ending Game 1. These wounds on your psyche were real, not imagined.
But they should not have been the only memories. We should already know a better world is possible. Just before their season fell apart, the 2018 team swept the Astros in four games on their home turf. One of those games began with the Mariners first four batters hitting for a team cycle and every one of the four ended with Edwin Díaz picking up the save. The 2023 team roared back into contention with a three-game sweep that included two of the games in which Julio Rodríguez broke the record for the most hits in a four game span, doing it with a combination of infield singles and titanic blasts.
Three nights in Houston.
In the first game, Bryan Woo got the better of Hunter Brown, backed up by solo shots from the Mariners superstar center fielder, their scrappy right fielder, and their pair of corner infielder trade deadline additions. It was never close.
The following night, the Mariners staked out a commanding early lead, but wobbled late in the game. Carlos Vargas gave up a Crawford Box 340-foot grand slam. And Ándres Muñoz let two runners reach with the lead down to just two. But in the same house where Yordan Álvarez once gobsmacked the Mariners, Víctor Robles gobsmacked the Astros, making an unreal catch and doubling up one of the runners to end the night with a stunned silence and push the Astros out of playoff position.
Tonight was the least promising start of the bunch. The Mariners went down 1-2-3 in the first and Jose Altuve led off the bottom half of the inning with a first-pitch double. But seven pitches later, Logan Gilbert was out of the inning and Altuve was still standing there at second base like a lawn ornament.
Josh Naylor opened the second with a surprise bunt, and the team never looked back. They loaded the bases and Robles got an RBI base on balls to bring up J.P. Crawford. One hanging sweeper later, the score was five-zip.
They weren’t done. Randy Arozarena broke an 0 for 21 and was on base for Cal Raleigh’s 58th home run of the season. Where the 2023 series featured Julio’s history-making hits, this weekend’s featured Cal’s, as he broke the franchise record and put some distance on the Kid to boot.
And just like that, it was over. That home run was a death blow that brought the score to 7-0. Since I first started writing here, I have said over and over (though more on Meet at the Mitt than on LL) that I will believe the Astros are dead when I see the body. I have never wavered and never been wrong. Four years in, I am ready to say that I believe that the Astros are dead. To be sure, my belief that they’re dead is not the same thing as mathematically eliminated. They could still make the playoffs, and they could beat the Mariners once they’re there. But I do not think the Astros stand a shot at the AL West, and they do not scare me anymore. For dealing the death blow, Cal Raleigh wins tonight’s Sun Hat Award.
Gilbert wasn’t dominant, but he didn’t have to be. His splitter was working well enough and the Astros helped him out with their haplessness. He got through six innings having surrendered just one run, a big boy blast by recent call-up Zach Cole, there to remind us that no victory is permanent and the Astros are not done forever.
Even with that reminder, the Mariners led throughout. And they did it despite all the obligatory baseball bank errors going in Houston’s favor. Isaac Paredes reached on one of the more ridiculous strike-three passed balls you’ll ever see, which is a highly competitive category. Altuve was gifted two extra pitches when clear strikes were called balls in a two-strike count.
The closest it came was once again in the late innings with Carlos Vargas on the mound. Caleb Ferguson didn’t quite have it and let the Astros score a second run, exiting the game with runners on the corners. When Dan Wilson brought in Vargas after last night’s salami, you could hear the delight in the naysayers’ voices, salivating at the chance to shout “Same Old Mariners” from the rooftop as soon as the lead was blown. Vargas had other plans. He quickly induced an inning-ending double play, and even when he came back out for the eighth and immediately gave up a Crawford Boxes special, he finished the inning with the score still at 7-3.
Assume they’ll lose and you won’t get hurt. I understood where the fear coming into this series was coming from. The stakes have rarely been higher, and Enron Field has been a house of horrors for the Mariners at times. But only at times. In reminding us of both the successes and failures, John said he’d sooner vomit than do anything other than let himself go. He chose to ride. Even in the middle of that mini-crisis tonight, the Astros’ win probability never spiked above 6%.
The playoffs are a series of coin flips, but it would take something extraordinary–even more extraordinary than the Mariners have ever experienced–for them to miss out entirely. Having secured the tie-breaker, they functionally have a four game lead on the division with six games left to play.
Too much of Mariners history is filled with individual achievements with not nearly enough team success to match. But this weekend had both. An instant classic, this was a series that we’ll talk about for the rest of our lives. Whatever comes next, we’re here right now. Soak it in.
