Mariners Playoff Chase: Is door to a wild card opening?

Sep 9, 2024, 8:11 AM

Justin Turner of the Seattle Mariners throws to first base in St. Louis. (Joe Puetz/Getty Images)

(Joe Puetz/Getty Images)

Seattle Sports

The Seattle Mariners continue to hang around in the American League playoff race, and a slip by a team in position for a wild card has made things a little more interesting with just three weeks left in the regular season.

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First, let’s look at what the Mariners have done of late.

Seattle’s postseason hopes looked to be hanging by a thread early last week when they dropped four straight games including back-to-back walkoffs in Oakland, falling under .500 for the first time since April as a result. The M’s shook that off, however, and have won four of their last five including a weekend series win in St. Louis to get to 73-71 heading into an off day Monday.

When you put stretches together this time of year like Seattle’s last five games, you’re probably going to head the right direction in the standings. And that is certainly the case for the Mariners.

Seattle is still chasing Houston for the AL West lead, with the Astros (77-66) up in the division by 4 1/2 games after they – like the M’s did in St. Louis – took two of three from the Arizona Diamondbacks this weekend. That’s still a not-impossible deficit to make up for Seattle, because even though just 18 games remain for the Mariners, three of them are against the Astros.

But what about the wild card? It appears a door is opening there for the Mariners, as Seattle goes into the week just 3 1/2 games from the final wild card from the AL, which currently belongs to the Minnesota Twins. And yeah, it’s been a tough time for the Twins lately.

Minnesota is 76-67 on the year after being swept in three games over the weekend by the Kansas City Royals (79-65), who in doing so actually passed the Twins for the second of the three wild cards. The Twins have now dropped five of their last six, and they’re surely now feeling the heat from the M’s and Detroit Tigers, who are both just 3 1/2 games behind them.

An important note, however: Minnesota won the season series against the Mariners by winning five of their seven games against each other, meaning the Twins own the tiebreaker. So at any point the rest of the year, add a half-game in the standings to Minnesota’s favor as it concerns the M’s. At least Seattle needs just one win in their final series against Houston to clinch the tiebreaker over the Astros, which is a big reason Fangraphs’ playoff odds are still higher for the M’s to win the division (4%) than a wild card (3.5%). While we’re on that topic, Seattle’s overall playoff odds are currently at 7.5% per Fangraphs.

Coming up

The Twins are home this week for three games against a 59-84 Angels team, but also three games next weekend against a 69-75 Cincinnati Reds team that just recently swept aside Houston.

Houston’s schedule is a little more friendly, which isn’t good news for the M’s. The Astros have the 62-82 A’s coming to town before heading to Anaheim for a weekend series with the Angels.

Oh, and it’s about to be a daunting next week and a half in Seattle. The Mariners are opening a nine-game homestand on Tuesday night with the first of two against the 81-64 Padres. Following that quick set, the Texas Rangers (70-74) and AL East-leading New York Yankees (82-61) then come into T-Mobile Park.

Well, no one said it was going to be easy.