The Mariners dawdled out of the All-Star break and sat five back in the division at the end of July. Then they came home and won nine of ten. It was a notable moment: the Mariners had never won nine of 10 on a homestand in their history. Well, the 2001 squad won 11 of 12, which is better, but the 2025 Mariners are next best. If you consider the excitement of the deadline, Ichiro’s honors, and the constancy of Cal Raleigh, it’s surely the org’s most enjoyable stretch since those record-setting weeks a quarter century ago. The next day, the Mariners tied for first.
Then they went 2-7 on the road trip that followed. It was not a statistically notable moment in Mariners’ history.
But not much changed—and not much changed when they won back-to-back series on their latest homestand. Yes, the Astros are back to two ahead with a win on Thursday, and the Mariners’ odds are down 14 points since they deadlocked the division on Aug. 12. But if you were to describe their relative position using the generalizations favored by writers, the AL West still reads as the flip of a rough coin.
The Mariners and Astros in Spring Training looked like equals (on paper). They’ve played like equals (on paper) most of the season.
The issue for the Mariners in July was the Astros had run up a big lead in the division with a stretch of one-run wins. One-run wins don’t tell us much about how a team might play going forward, but they do count in the standings. And because the Astros banked those wins while the Mariners slumped, the gap in the division grew quickly to seven. The deficit looked insurmountable, even as the Mariners inched better (on paper). They needed a similar distribution of fortune.
Then they got it. The Mariners won five one-run games over the “good vibes” homestand and erased the cosmic gap. We’re now back to a division that looks closer to tied (on paper), with no theoretical wall between them.
Still, there does seem to be a more tangible wall. The Mariners remain two games back, as they’ve been for most of the month; they haven’t held sole possession of first place since June 1. It’s clearly not easy ground to make up, and it won’t be easy ground to hold onto, if or when they get there.
But they certainly can get there. For all the bumps in the road, the Mariners have played better than the Astros for months now. They’re already ahead by Base Runs and pythag; they have (among active players) the best team wRC+, a top five bullpen, and a believable starting rotation; and only the Yankees are projected better in the AL the rest of the way. The Mariners would surely be the favorites with infinite rolls.
But the plot always ends; the paper gets recycled. Only 28 games remain—enough for one last wrinkle. The Mariners need to get to the point.