Game 162 –
Tyler Anderson vs. Reid Detmers, 12:10pm
It’s perhaps the most anticipated Mariners game in years, and perhaps the best day for baseball fans since what, 2011? We’ve seen amazing single games in the playoffs, but it’s been a long time since a wild card race has had this many teams still fighting, and MLB’s made the brilliant decision to start all of these games simultaneously. This is the opening round of March Madness, but baseball, with a playoff spot on the line. The Yankees loss made up for the M’s loss the previous day, and improbably, the M’s are still alive.
With an absolutely massive come-from-behind win after what looked like a crushing 3-run HR gave the Angels the lead, the M’s have given themselves a chance. I’ve not seen the kind of pandemonium at the stadium and outside of it *at a Mariners game* since the last M’s playoff series. Felix’s last game comes sort of close, but that’s just a reminder that the last several things that have brought a huge crowd to their feet, urging the team on, summoning belief, have all been sad occasions.
Underneath all of this euphoria, this is a sad occasion as well: this is almost certainly Kyle Seager’s last game in a Mariners uniform, and it’s another reminder that despite this group’s undeniable camaraderie, a ton of moves are coming in the offseason. The least heralded and perhaps most important deadline deal in the majors is the one that brought Tyler Anderson to Seattle. They’ve already turned to him to save a season that could’ve slipped away, and they’ll do it again today. He’s now one of the bigger decisions the M’s will have to make this offseason. The M’s have more rotation slots to fill than they expected, with the M’s a lock to turn down Yusei Kikuchi’s option (though Kikuchi could be back if he exercises his one-year player option), and after Justus Sheffield’s disastrous 2021. Anderson’s steadying half-season was critical as the M’s playoff shot changed slightly from 100% pure luck to something more like a decent team getting hot at the right time.
If there’s any concern for the game, and it’s hard to even think about concerns having been gifted this unbelievable baseball holiday, it’s that Anderson’s worst game of the year came against this Angels club a bit over a week ago. He’ll have to be much sharper, of course, but he’ll also be able to lean on his hit-and-homer-suppressing stadium. That context will help the Angels’ Reid Detmers, too, but the rookie appears to need a lot more help than park effects can provide. Detmers rise has been meteoric; after the Angels’ made him their first round pick in 2020, he breezed through the minors in just over 60 IP, reaching the majors in early August. At AA/AAA, his curve/fastball combination was nearly untouchable, and he K’s 108 in those 62 IP. Somewhat similar to Logan Gilbert perhaps, his breaking ball wasn’t quite the bat-missing weapon at the highest level, at least initially. Gilbert eventually refined his slider and has shown he belongs. Detmers hasn’t yet done the same with his big breaking, slow curve or his harder slider. Detmers is giving up too much hard contact, and thus he’s given up 23 hits in 19 innings, including 5 dingers in his 4 starts. Detmers is the Angels’ future, and I understand wanting to see more of him, particularly after an IL stint, but this is pretty good match-up for the M’s. It doesn’t hurt that Detmers is a lefty, giving the M’s Mitch Haniger and Ty France the platoon advantage.
I think I’m not alone in thinking that last night’s game was the happiest I’ve been watching an M’s game in over a decade. It hasn’t swept away all of the concerns I have for the team in 2022, but it’s shown how compelling baseball can be, and how a chase like this builds tension over weeks and months, making moments like Haniger’s single unbelievably cathartic. I don’t much care what happens in the wild card game, should the M’s make it, and I don’t have a preference who or where they play. I just feel like we’ve been given a gift, and I’m grateful for every minute of this. Despite all of the three-way and four-way tie scenarios, despite all of the intricacies of the tiebreakers, the M’s have made things delightfully simple. Just win, and you might get to play again. Win that, and you get to play more. Repeat. This season looked like it was over right as it began, when James Paxton’s elbow gave out a bit more than an inning into his season. That it hasn’t, and that it’s gone the bizarre way it has, is a testament to Scott Servais and this club’s collective belief. One of the hard things about blogging about the Seattle bloody Mariners all these years is the way time compresses and erases so much – the years run together, the bad and mediocre teams had moments that I thought I’d always remember, but they get buried by another 5 years of falling short. Whatever happens today, I can honestly say I will never forget this team and this year.
1: Crawford, SS
2: France, 1B
3: Haniger, RF
4: Seager, 3B
5: Toro, 2B
6: Torrens, DH
7: Kelenic, CF
8: Raleigh, C
9: Moore, LF
SP: Anderson
Toronto hosts Baltimore, as Hyun-Jin Ryu squares off against Bruce Zimmermann. New York turns to Jameson Taillon against the Rays’ Michael Wacha and presumably more of their bullpen of death. The Red Sox have Chris Sale starting in DC against Joan Adon, a youngster making his MLB debut.
Go M’s. And also, Go Nats, Go Rays, and Go Orioles.
Game 160, Angels at Mariners – What Does It All Mean?
Marco Gonzales vs. Jose Suarez, 7:10pm
It’s here: the final season of the series, and the most eagerly anticipated of any series in a decade. The M’s aren’t just waiting for a series of incredibly unlikely events anymore. Through their own remarkable work, the hardest part is done. They just need to focus on beating an out-of-it and already-eyeing-up-vacation-ideas Angels club, who will not be starting Shohei Ohtani. That’s…that sounds OK. Sure, if Boston sweeps the Nats, things get delightfully complicated, and we get play-in game scenarios and tie-breakers and all of that, but fundamentally, they’ve got it in their own, weird, hands.
Clearly, this almost impossible playoff chase has had an impact on M’s fans in the northwest. The sports radio stations are talking about it instead of wall-to-wall Seahawks discussion. The team’s pleas for fans to pack the stands have been heard, and tonight’s game is likely a sell-out, with Saturday and Sunday strong possibilities to sell out as well. In general, people seem to be reacting exactly as you’d hope, and exactly as they should: a completely bizarre, unlikely gift has just been dropped on them, and they’re all kind of bewildered and excited, just as they would if they found $500 lying in the road or if they found a long-lost family heirloom. Hey, thank you Fate.
There have been other voices, voices that point to the run differential or their still-pretty-low playoff odds, and still-lower odds of actually winning the World Series. “Just because you found that $500 doesn’t mean you’re, like, some sort of money-finding expert!” Look, the ship sailed on this year’s M’s team being a truly great baseball club. We don’t get to have that, and making the playoffs wouldn’t change that simple fact. The M’s abysmal run differential and their remarkable performance in “clutch” situations are indicators that their performance is not sustainable over the course of a season. Here’s the patently-obvious thing, though: the season’s just about over. No arguments about their run differential matter anymore. They mattered in June/July/August, but with each game, they matter less. We’re now down to looking at individual games, and as we’ve seen, baseball at the single-game level is just noise and weirdness and joy and beauty. Or ugly 14-1 losses. The team’s run differential just isn’t a good predictor of any of it, just as it hasn’t predicted the M’s utter domination of Oakland.
Is it weird to get excited about a team’s that’s overperformed? Shouldn’t this FO be judged on the thing that they keep asking to be judged on: building a lasting, sustainable winning team? No, and yes. It’s not weird to get excited about random good fortune. Most lottery winners look pretty stoked. None of this absolves the M’s FO of their main duty: building that year in/year out contender. If I’m nervous about one thing, it would be that this chase distracts people from holding the FO accountable for the REAL goal for a year or two. But the two goals – luck into a pennant chase and then grow into a legit WS contender in 2022 and beyond – are complementary. This is one of the many cases where looking at the numbers (Fangraphs’ Playoff Odds, run differential, Team WAR totals, whatever) make all of this craziness MORE fun. The M’s have the highest Clutch score ever. They have one of the largest gaps between their record and pythagorean/pythagenpat record ever, and quite possibly the largest gap between their record and a BaseRuns-projected record ever. We will never, ever see this again. This is historic stuff, and for once, all of that good luck alighted on the Seattle Mariners. We will be picking through the treasure trove of data, anecdotes, and assoted ephemera from this season for the next decade. When I figure out what the hell is happening, I want to tell my grandkids about it some day.
Let’s be clear: the M’s are not as good as many of the teams that have already been eliminated, including the anti-Mariners, the San Diego Padres. They look clearly a step or two behind the Blue Jays, the team desperately trying to chase them down. This run, and the way it’s happened, doesn’t change that. But after a long stretch where the M’s were buoyed up by players who’d signed minor league deals, odd hot streaks from Luis Torrens and Abe Toro, and Kendall Graveman’s amazing run, their *current* hot streak has had major contributions from players who are actually a part of the next few seasons. Jarred Kelenic pulled out of the batting death spiral he’d been mired in at exactly the right time, and Logan Gilbert’s steadied himself after a few bad outings. Tyler Anderson’s a free-agent-to-be, but I’d be shocked if the M’s didn’t offer him a multi-year deal. Is all of this a sign that the M’s are pennant winners in 2022? No, not without a big offseason and not without major growth/improvement from their youngsters this offseason. But it’s worth noting that the club currently in playoff position is NOT the club that racked up a lot of that negative differential in April and May.
That’s somewhat true of all teams, but I can’t quite fathom how differently this season could’ve gone. The opening day rotation has two players remaining, tonight’s starter, Marco Gonzales, and Chris Flexen. James Paxton went down, then Justus Sheffield and Justin Dunn. The immediate replacements for Paxton – Nick Margevicius and Ljay Newsome – followed Paxton to injury rehab almost immediately. The bullpen that the M’s had touted as rebuilt and much-improved had Rafael Montero, Keynan Middleton, and Will Vest. When that group – and especially Montero and Vest – struggled, they turned to Domingo Tapia, Aaron Fletcher, and Wyatt Mills. But as the injuries mounted, and 40-man slots opened up, they finally called upon Paul Sewald and JT Chargois. The line-up’s benefited from Abraham Toro, a trade they made with that result in mind. But while the M’s deserve credit for finding the previously-unremarkable Sewald, it has to be noted that they didn’t put him on the team initially, and seemed to have him about 5th in line *among Tacoma relievers* for a shot in Seattle. Yes, the contract status of Sewald and Chargois meant they’d probably always be behind Wyatt Mills or even Robert Dugger or Erik Swanson for the first call, but I’ve been kind of shaking all day thinking of what could’ve happened if Sewald had a May or June opt-out clause in his minor league contract and never got a call from Seattle. The M’s assembled a historically good pile of ex-waiver claims and cast-off reliever this year, and it saved their season. I also hope they get better at identifying the Sewaldian gems from amongst the Brady Lails, Robert Duggers and Domingo Tapias.
1: Crawford, SS
2: France, 1B
3: Haniger, RF
4: Seager, 3B
5: Torrens, DH
6: Toro, 2B
7: Kelenic, CF
8: Murphy, C
9: Moore, LF
SP: Marco Gonzales
The ultra-competitive Gonzales is a perfect starter for this game.
The Yankees face the Tampa Bay Rays, who aren’t playing for much, having wrapped up the best record in the AL. The Yanks start remarkable ex-M’s cast-off Nestor Cortes, who has a 2.85 ERA in 88+ IP this year somehow. Cortes gave up 6 HRs in 44 PAs as a Mariner last year, but has given up just 13 to 356 batters-faced this year. The Rays start Shane McClanahan, the fireballing youngster who’s having a great rookie season, but kind of gets lost in the shuffle of the non-Glasnow Tampa fireballers. I still get him confused with Drew Rasmussen, but no, Rasmussen was the trade return for Willy Adames, while McClanahan was a first-round pick by the Rays in 2018.
The Orioles head to Toronto to face the Jays, who are coming off that crushing loss to New York yesterday. The Orioles start…look, you don’t want to know, and it doesn’t matter. Let’s just hope they do to Toronto what some equally-unlikely starters did to Boston these past few days. Toronto turns to Steven Matz, but Robbie Ray made his last start yesterday. I’d say they could try to bring him back on short rest, but the most likely pathway for the Jays now involves some kind of play-in game, and they’d likely want him for that (or, you know, the Wild Card game itself).
The Red Sox are in Washington DC to take on the Nationals and Josh Rogers. Rogers was a one-time Yankees farmhand who’d been with Baltimore, but even the pitching-starved O’s didn’t want Rogers, releasing him from their AAA farm team. Washington picked him up, and he was a bit better, although nothing eye-popping. Since coming up this September, though, he’s fared pretty well as your standard issue soft-tossing lefty FB/Slider/Change guy who doesn’t really miss bats and really reminds me of a 1980s style of pitcher. Not sure that’s confidence-inspiring, but the Sox must be feeling all kinds of pressure after dropping a must-win series against the Orioles.