Seattle Mariners-Blue Jays ACLS has ingredients for bedlam

As dramatic as the Seattle Mariners’ five-game ALDS against the Detroit Tigers turned out to be, I’m willing to bet we ain’t seen nothing yet.

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After the darnedest 15-inning win the postseason has ever seen, there’s now just one thing standing between the last MLB team yet to taste the World Series and the World Series itself – and that’s the only team in baseball that has an entire country behind it.

A team that the Mariners have a lot of history with, in part because their histories quite literally began together.

And a team that no doubt is looking to redeem itself for what happened the other time it matched up with the M’s in the playoffs three years ago.

The Mariners and Toronto Blue Jays probably don’t seem like the most obvious matchup for a drama-filled ALCS, but trust me, this has the potential to be an all-time classic.

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There’s the history. And local storylines. And a unique geographical rivalry despite being nearly 2,500 miles apart. And even some bad blood.

Oh, and then there’s the on-field matchup that should be absolutely fascinating.

Let’s break down five reasons this Mariners-Jays ALCS is a potential powder keg about to take North America by storm.

1. The history.

The most obvious thing to point to is their beginnings, which came as the two expansion teams that joined the American League in 1977. And the Mariners and Blue Jays started very similarly, which is to say they were bad. Like, really bad. Neither Seattle nor Toronto even threatened finishing with a winning season in their first five years in the league, with Toronto’s 53-109 record (.327 winning percentage) in 1979 serving as the low point.

Both took a step forward in 1982, with Seattle winning 76 games and Toronto winning 78. But that’s where their paths diverged.

The Blue Jays kept heading in the right direction after ’82, while the Mariners went back the other way. By the time Seattle finally had its first winning season in 1991, the Blue Jays were playing in their third ALCS. And by the time the Mariners finally reached their first playoffs in 1995, the Blue Jays had already won back-to-back World Series titles.

Toronto is now in the ALCS for the eighth time in franchise history, while the Mariners are in just their sixth-ever playoffs. There’s definitely a case of Big Brother-Little Brother going on here. But there is something the Mariners hold over the Jays.

These two teams of course met in the postseason for the first time three years ago. You probably remember it. And there are players still on the respective rosters that most certainly do.

The plucky Mariners rolled into Toronto fresh off of ending a 21-year postseason drought, and despite being the last wild card to make it in, Seattle cruised to a 4-0 win in Game 1 of the best-of-three AL Wild Card Series.

The Blue Jays were primed to even things up in Game 2, jumping out to an 8-1 lead. But then the Mariners rallied for four runs in the sixth. And they rallied again in the eighth. Then with the bases loaded and two outs, J.P. Crawford hit the most violent bloop double in the history of the game, somehow resulting in two of Toronto’s best players crashing into each other while the ball fell to the turf and the Mariners scored the tying runs.

An inning later, Adam Frazier added to the list of iconic go-ahead postseason doubles in M’s history, and Seattle pulled off an improbable 10-9 win to sweep.

At least in head-to-head postseason matchups, it’s Little Brother 1, Big Brother 0. You better believe that’s a record the Blue Jays are going to want to rectify in Round 2.

2. The storylines.

Something that came out of Seattle’s playoff win at Toronto was the beginning of “Big Dumper” dominating Canada. Then just a second-year catcher with the Mariners, Cal Raleigh followed up his drought-ending walk-off homer by leaving the yard at Rogers Centre in his first postseason at-bat.

Raleigh has loved hitting in Toronto ever since. In 11 games and 47 plate appearance at Rogers Centre, Raleigh has seven homers, 14 RBIs, a .786 slugging mark and 1.126 OPS.

This isn’t about what Raleigh does against Toronto, though. It’s about what that prompted Blue Jays manager John Schneider to say.

“He’s not very tough to pitch to when you execute your pitches,” Schneider said out of frustration after Raleigh homered twice in a Mariners win in Toronto in April 2023.

Raleigh has made Schneider eat those words in the years since, and certainly proven the statement completely baseless with his historic 60-homer season this year.

Raleigh was in the middle of another minor beef with the Jays this year when Toronto pitcher José Berríos accused him during a game of stealing signs while on second base, which resulted in a brief clearing of the benches.

On the other side, there’s a local product who burned the Mariners earlier this year: Addison Barger, a Bellevue native who went 6 for 13 with a homer, three doubles, a walk, four runs scored and five RBIs to help the Blue Jays sweep three games in Seattle back in May.

Another storyline that is sure to be picked up in Canada are the two Canadians on the Mariners’ roster. First baseman Josh Naylor grew up near Toronto in Mississagua, Ontario, while reliever Matt Brash is from a few hours away in Kingston, Ontario.

3. The border.

Sticking with the Canada angle, Mariners fans know quite well that even though Seattle is nowhere near Toronto, it’s quite close in proximity to plenty of Blue Jays fans. With the Blue Jays standing as the only MLB team north of the border, British Columbia is full of people who root for the Jays and have made a habit of invading T-Mobile Park when Canada’s team comes to Seattle.

It’s something Mariners players have historically had a problem with. Marco Gonzales had a memorable quote about it, and Félix Hernández once had to remind Blue Jays fans whose house they were in.

The big question for the ALCS is whether there will even be the chance for an invasion from B.C., because tickets for the two or three games that will be played at T-Mobile Park won’t be easy to come by – and you know Mariners fans aren’t giving up their opportunity to see playoff baseball.

4. The stadiums.

Speaking of T-Mobile Park, it would be hard to top the atmosphere created by the 47,000-plus fans at each of the three ALDS games against the Tigers in Seattle.

But if any other stadium could come close, it’s Rogers Centre.

Mariners fans are driven by an unrivaled desire to see their team that has seldom seen chances like this finally win the big one. There’s a certain fevered desperation that can only come from long playoff droughts and never seeing your team reach the World Series, and the M’s have the market cornered there.

The Blue Jays have the market cornered on national pride, though. Their playoff games can produce the kind of enthusiasm that is usually only possible in international competitions like the Olympics or the World Baseball Classic.

While the Mariners and Blue Jays’ stadiums will rival each other in crowd noise, seeing how differently they play is bound to cause some whiplash for baseball fans.

With a retractable roof that can fully enclose the park, Rogers Centre can be quite hitter-friendly even in the fall. The stadium is perfectly league average for overall offense (100 park factor per Statcast), but above-average for both doubles (105 park factor) and homers (104).

Meanwhile, T-Mobile Park not only is the hardest park in all of baseball to create offense in (91 park factor, which is well behind second-to-last), but it has proven to basically be impossible for hitters in October.

There have now been four postseason games at T-Mobile Park since 2022. None of those games have seen a team score more than three runs, and that’s with three of those games going extra innings. One was Seattle’s 3-2 win in 15 innings over Detroit on Friday, and another was the 18-inning struggle in 2022 with Houston where just one total run scored. We’re talking enough innings for two whole games and not enough runs to even decide them both.

Since 2022, the teams that have played postseason games at T-Mobile Park have combined for just 16 runs in 53 innings, which is an average of an absolutely minuscule 2.7 runs per a nine inning game – and that’s for two teams. Meanwhile, the Blue Jays just scored 23 runs on their own in two games at home against the Yankees in the ALDS.

We’re about to see two very different kinds of baseball games played in one ALCS just because of the venues.

5. The baseball.

Ah, right, we should probably talk about the teams themselves.

The Mariners and Blue Jays both play baseball tailored to their ballparks, and it’s going to result in a fascinating clash of styles.

Toronto is baseball’s best hitting team. It led the league during the regular season in batting average (.265) and on-base percentage (.333), and was third in OPS (.760). The Blue Jays will hit some homers (tied for 11th with 191) but rely more on making contact and stringing hits together, as they led MLB in total hits and singles, ranked third in doubles, and had only three more strikeouts than the team with the least in the game.

As for the Mariners, they know the best way to score runs at their home park is to hit the ball out of it, so they were third in homers (238), 11th in on-base (.320), and 10th in slugging (.420) and OPS (.740), but 20th in average (.244). Their focus on power comes with the tradeoff of strikeouts, which they had the sixth-most in MLB.

The Mariners will no doubt try to do against the Blue Jays what they did against the Tigers: out-pitch them. Seattle had a much better ERA (3.87) than Toronto (4.19) in the regular season, and that was with a starting rotation that wasn’t as healthy as it (hopefully) is now.

The M’s should have an advantage in the bullpen, but if they have designs on doing damage against Toronto’s, it won’t be easy getting to it early on with two-time All-Star Kevin Gausman starting Game 1 for the Jays on Sunday. And there’s no telling what shape Seattle’s staff is in to begin the series considering how much pitching it had to use in Friday’s marathon just to get to the ALCS.

Can the Mariners keep up with the Blue Jays’ offense in Toronto? Will the Blue Jays be the first team to figure out how to put together rallies in Seattle in October? Will Toronto have an answer for the Mariners’ bullpen? Will Seattle have enough pitching after emptying the tank in the ALDS?

This smells like a series where anything can, and probably will, happen.

Seattle Mariners-Blue Jays ACLS has ingredients for bedlam

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