The Seattle Mariners enter the second half of the MLB season in an interesting spot.

They’re in position for the third and final wild card from the American League with a 51-45 record, but they remain five games behind the Houston Astros (56-40) for the AL West lead. That being said, the M’s and Astros went into the All-Star break heading in opposite directions.

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The Mariners’ bats went off as Seattle took down the Tigers, who own MLB’s best record at 59-38, in three straight games in Detroit last weekend. The Astros, meanwhile, dropped five of their last six games before the break, including a three-game sweep in Houston by the Cleveland Guardians, who came into that series on a 10-game losing streak.

Even though Houston still has a sizable lead in the division, Seattle gets a shot to cut a chunk out of it with a three-game series against the Astros starting Friday night at T-Mobile Park. The two rivals may keep doing battle off the field for another 11 days, as Yahoo Sports senior MLB analyst and Baseball Bar-B-Cast host Jordan Shusterman said Wednesday.

The MLB trade deadline is on July 31, and not only are the Mariners expected to be a major player as a buyer on the market, but the Astros have reason to do the same.

“Houston remains in a very, very strange spot,” Shusterman said during his weekly conversation with Seattle Sports’ Bump and Stacy. “Obviously, they still have this pretty good cushion atop the division, but there are still some pretty serious questions. It’s amazing, for as impressive as they’ve been and for how much they’ve won consistently, they did not exactly finish on a good note going into the second half.”

Among those questions are the statuses of star slugger Yordan Alvarez, who has been out with a fractured right hand since early May, and shortstop Jeremy Peña, who suffered a small rib fracture in late June. And Houston’s offense has struggled in 2025 (tied for 15th in MLB in runs scored), with its pitching staff (fifth in ERA, first in WHIP) having to carry the load.

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Whatever holes the Astros decide to try to plug, they don’t have the same level of talent in their farm system to deal that the Mariners have. Not that Shusterman thinks that will stop them from making a splash, especially with the general consensus being that the American League is having a down year, meaning the race to make the World Series is wide open.

“They have some questions, and some that we still are not really sure when (they) are going to be answered,” Shusterman said of the Astros. “Guys like Yordan Alvarez – when are we going to see him again, if at all? So Houston is a team I’m very quietly interested in in terms of the deadline, because while they still do not have a very strong farm system, we know that they are willing to be aggressive.

“So if they view this team as a team that can win the American League still, and I have to imagine they still do, I am very curious to see how they get creative in order to address some of the more obvious needs on their roster.”

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Bump and Stacy airs from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. live weekdays on Seattle Sports.

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