You could very easily make the case that the reason the Seattle Mariners are not in first place in the AL West right now is because they have not played well against the Orioles. It’s been a dismal season and, win or lose, that will not change today. Within that dismal play, the Orioles are 4-1 against Seattle. They’re guaranteed a winning season and if they can steal a win in the finale, it would be a dominant 5-1 record against a surefire postseason team.
There are a lot of disappointments with the 2025 Orioles. How they’ve played against the Mariners isn’t one of them. Or at least not the big picture. This series has still been a bit of a mess for the offense, even if they did manage to pull their first walkoff win last night.
How well anyone feels about next year is going to depend on how the core guys do the rest of the way. I feel like a broken record mentioning this every time, but that’s because it’s true every game for the rest of the year. We need to see signs of life from some players who have had rough patches this year.
The young stars and solid regulars of the previous two seasons, and the players who were only imagined stars/solid regulars at that time, need to show that they can be the nucleus of a good team, year in and year out. This has not happened this season and it’s one reason (though not the only reason, and maybe not even the biggest reason) why the team is where it is right now. Gunnar Henderson is the only player in this group who is hitting unambiguously well in the month of August.
Tomoyuki Sugano makes the start for the Orioles today. He’s fresh off a strong seven-inning outing against the Athletics, though of course, the Mariners are going to be a tougher task than those guys. Dean Kremer and Trevor Rogers have paved the way and it would be nice to see Sugano pick up where they left off.
There is not much new to say about the state of the Orioles lineup on a nightly basis. When Daniel Johnson is the #6 hitter and three guys are below him, that’s not great! The Jackson (last name) duo has had some okay hitting things going on in small samples. Carlson endured a long 0-for before getting three hits in his last two games. He has a lot more hitting to do from now until season’s end to get where his 2025 campaign should be summed up by anything other than a puke emoji.
Mariners starting pitcher Logan Evans is a negative bWAR player for the season (“just” -0.1, but still negative) over 14 starts. Orioles fans are by now quite familiar with a pitcher’s lack of quality being no guarantee of performing well or even decently against that pitcher on a given game.