In Kansas City on Monday morning, the Seattle Mariners woke up alone in first place atop the AL West for the first time since June 1.
Three observations as the first-place Seattle Mariners hit stretch run
They had capped their seven-game homestand with an exclamation point Sunday, an 11-2 win over the Angels that ran their season-high winning streak to nine games. If you could have foreseen this two weeks ago when a 2-11 road stretch (that would continue to 2-14) prompted a team meeting, you might just have better powers than the Etsy witch.
The Mariners have been anything but predictable. The team that was supposed to pitch has been led by the bats. The team that started with an 18-12 March/April (.640 winning percentage) followed it up with back-to-back .481 win percentages in May and June. The team that had a 9-1 post-trade deadline surge followed by a 2-8 swoon.
The roller coaster in 2025 has been real, and for a group of players who had high expectations for what this team could do, enough was enough.
“You just get to that point where you just say, screw it, go out there and play,” Cal Raleigh said after Sunday’s win. “Don’t worry about the rest of the stuff. Whatever happens happens. Sometimes we try to micromanage, we try to take control of certain outcomes. And baseball is just a game where you just got to go play freely, nothing to lose. And from there, whatever happens happens. If you put your best foot forward, you play hard, you do things right, usually good things happen.”
Raleigh and others have talked in recent weeks about not getting wrapped up in individual numbers, good or bad. Put aside your struggles, ignore the numbers on the scoreboard – or in Raleigh’s case, the history books. This team plays best when it plays as a team, passing the baton from hitter to hitter in the lineup, pitcher to pitcher in the rotation and bullpen.
More history: Cal Raleigh ties Mantle for switch-hitter HR record
“We’ve been playing loose, we’ve been playing free, which is good to see. And it’s just continuing to do that,” Raleigh said. “I think a lot of these guys, you can see they’re kind of free, they’re loose out there. We’re playing with nothing to lose, and that’s kind of the mentality we have to take. And you can’t go out there and try to play tight and try to play not to lose. I think we’re doing a good job of going out there, trying to take it. And you saw that this week, for sure.”
The timing could not be better. The Mariners had reached the now-or-never mark and will need to continue what they have been doing if they are to win the division title. In committing to playing loose with the nothing-to-lose attitude, they have put themselves in a spot where they are able to put aside the pressure that can come with this time of year – something general manager Justin Hollander hopes they are able to avoid.
“It’s an awesome opportunity for our organization and players,” Hollander said this week on the radio pregame show. “You have an opportunity in front of you. Everybody starts out with the same opportunity on April 1. Now that funnel has narrowed a lot. We are one of the teams that is still left that still has an opportunity to go and hoist the trophy, and that is all you are trying to do.”
Winning the division title is the first step, and Hollander believes the Mariners have – and have always had – the blueprint to do it.
“I think we need to pitch well over the last set of games,” he said. “Series by series, can we deliver quality start after quality start? I think the best version of the Mariners, our starting pitching, the bullpen, that’s our rock. That’s our foundation. We had a bumpy road trip. We finished it very well. We’ve pitched well on the homestand. Can we continue to cycle through?
“I think when we started the season, the thing that people feared about the M’s is every day there’s no break. Somebody else is going to come out and start that game that’s going to make it really tough on us to separate from them offensively. They just make it a pain in the butt to play the Mariners. If we can make it a pain in the butt for the next few weeks to play against us because we are dominating the strike zone, because our run prevention is the way we have expected to be in the last few years, we will be in good shape because I think were going to score with the group we have.”
The final 12 games will tell the tale, and as nervous a time this is, at this very moment the Mariners are in a good and exciting position for the final sprint, according to Hollander.
“Scoreboard-watching, that’s all about the opportunity to put ourself in position to go do something memorable to change your sports life, your work life, your career,” he said. “It’s just an awesome opportunity for our organization. And I am hoping and betting we take advantage of it.”
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