After a stretch that was supposed to keep the door open, the Seattle Mariners are done.
Their playoff chase officially ended Thursday afternoon when the Texas Rangers beat the New York Mets 3-1, wiping out the last mathematical path Seattle had left. The Mariners needed a lot to go right in a very specific way: win their final four games and get both Texas and Houston to lose their final four. That would have created a three-way tie at the top of the American League West, and Seattle held the tiebreaker.
Instead, the season is over in the standings.
What makes the finish sting is how favorable the setup looked not long ago. The Mariners were five games out entering Sept. 3, but they were heading into a 22-game run that seemed built for a surge - three games against the Rangers, two against the Astros, and 17 combined against the Athletics, Angels and Rockies, the three worst teams in baseball this season.
They never took full advantage. Through the first 18 games of that stretch, Seattle went 8-10 and fell out of the race.
The collapse lands especially hard because of where the Mariners started. After winning their first AL West title in 24 years and getting to Game 7 of the American League Championship Series last season, they opened this year as the clear division favorite and one of the top World Series candidates.
FanGraphs gave them a 59.9% chance to win the AL West, an 80.9% chance to make the playoffs and a 9.5% chance to win it all. Only the Los Angeles Dodgers carried better odds in any of those categories.
Now Seattle is headed for October at home for the third time in the past four seasons. The club was trying to string together back-to-back postseason trips for the first time since 2000-01, but that chase is over as well.
At 73-85, the Mariners are on track to finish below .500 in a full season for the first time since 2019. That would end a franchise-best run of five straight winning seasons.
In Other News...
Mariners Just Gave Fans Plenty To Argue About After This Loss
The Mariners came out of Monday night with a 6-4 loss to the Angels that felt as frustrating as it was familiar, the kind of game where the box score only hints at how many chances slipped away. Seattle never found much rhythm offensively and made life harder on itself in the field, with a dropped third strike among the defensive miscues and a couple of double plays wiping out scoring opportunities before they could really build.
Bryan Woo took his turn on the mound, but the bigger conversation afterward centered on how long he was left in and on the pitch selection that helped lead to a game-tying RBI. For a club trying to stay sharp in the margins, this was one of those nights when both the lineup and the defense left plenty to second-guess, and there will be no shortage of opinions on what should have happened differently. [Read more 🡒]
Julio Rodrguezs Apology Just Put The Mariners On The Spot
Seattles season ended with the kind of inventory no club wants to make in October: no playoff berth, 85 losses, and a star who flashed enough to remind everyone what he can do while still falling short of his usual standard. Julio Rodrguez provided one of the more notable swings of the year, but across the board both his offense and defense dipped from the levels that have made him the face of the franchise, and his uneven year fit into a larger Mariners story that never quite found the traction it needed.
What made the final days of the season sting even more was the tone around the clubhouse, where players and staff openly framed the year as a failure and pushed for accountability from top to bottom. Once the conversation turns to coaching, roster construction and overall performance in the same breath, it puts the organization on a short path to answers, and Rodrguezs public apology only sharpened that pressure by making it clear the standard in Seattle is still much higher than what this group delivered. [Read more 🡒]
Mariners Face A Cal Raleigh Question They Cant Ignore
Cal Raleigh has become one of the Mariners most important players, but the conversation around him has shifted from his power and production to the wear and tear that comes with catching almost every day. The workload has been heavy for several seasons, and the discussion now is whether Seattle has pushed him too hard for too long, especially after a 2026 campaign that raised more questions than answers about his overall performance.
Former catcher A.J. Pierzynski weighed in on just how demanding the position can be, pointing to both the physical grind and the mental strain that come with handling so many games behind the plate. The Mariners cant pin Raleighs 2026 struggles on one cause alone, but they do have a decision to make for 2027, and its one that could affect not only his health but also how much offense they get from one of their most central pieces. [Read more 🡒]