Stacy Rost: Mariners have chance to be the ‘big bad’ in AL

Aug 27, 2025, 11:00 AM

Host, Bump & Stacy (10 a.m. to 2 p.m.)

You can hardly be too upset with the Seattle Mariners losing a hard-fought game against the San Diego Padres on Wednesday night. Seattle gave a grand slam in the first inning and still pulled ahead by a run in the fifth before reliever Caleb Ferguson surrendered two to the Padres in the sixth.

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But on a night the Astros also lost (to the Rockies!), there was an opportunity for Seattle, and every single one of those missed opportunities is going to let more than a few fans wonder whether a now-tight division race is too good to be true. Or whether this Mariners team will eventually have its warts exposed, costing it a trip to the playoffs. Or perhaps they’ll get there and find they don’t stack up against the American League’s biggest, baddest teams.

But, respectfully, remind me who those guys are again?

A month ago I would’ve told you it was the Yankees. They felt like the Bronx Bombers when they swept Seattle in the Mariners’ second-to-last series before the All-Star Break. They also delivered one of the most gut-wrenching losses of the season to the M’s.

Bryan Woo carried a no-hitter being into the eighth inning with a 5-0 lead, but it was broken up by Jazz Chisholm. New York rallied and went on to beat the M’s in the 10th. It was the first time since 1977 that a team had lost while carrying a no-hitter with five or more runs into through seven innings. And it felt very, very Mariners. As in it felt very, very weird and unfortunate. On that day, the Mariners were hardly eliminated, but they did look like a team that was a step below the Yanks and — at the time — a few other red hot teams.

This is the start of where things shifted. Because the Detroit Tigers were one of those teams, with a franchise-record six All-Stars heading to Atlanta. And then the Mariners swept them. Seattle scored 35 runs in that series, and it was just the second time Detroit had been swept this season.

Then Detroit cooled off with a sub-.500 July, posting their highest ERA and lowest average as a team. They’ve improved in August, but not to their pre-All-Star break standards. The Yanks are 7-3 in their last 10, but they have also chilled. Meanwhile, the banged-up Astros are under .500 in both July and August and have watched a seven-game division lead over the M’s dwindle to 1.5 games.

So sure, if there’s a team in the American League that can be the big bad with a ton of slug and at least two arms that can generate strikeouts, I guess you wouldn’t want to face them.

Oh wait, that’s the Mariners. In the American League, they’re second in home runs, walks and stolen bases. Their pitching isn’t nearly what it was last season, but their ERA is better than the Yankees and AL East-leading Blue Jays (eighth overall), and they have the most strikeouts since the All-Star break. More importantly, all five starters are healthy and in the rotation at the same time.

The Mariners have struggled at times, just like those teams. The Astros have the lowest run differential of any division leader (plus-14), and you know what? If the Mariners were leading the West, they’d also have the lowest (plus-24).

Seattle is 3-7 in its last 10 games and coming off a horrid 2-7 road trip. But if you’re talking about the best teams in an incredibly competitive American League, that conversation right now has to include the Mariners.

They have four players who have hit 20 or more home runs with the team this year, plus they made a trade deadline add of Eugenio Suárez, who is fourth in MLB with 41 homers. Cal Raleigh is leading the league with 50 homers and is on pace to hit the most by a Mariner in a season, ever.

Logan Gilbert hasn’t been his best self in 2025 but struck out a career-high 13 in his last outing, while Bryan Woo notched his first All-Star nod in a career year this season.

They may have needed to add more to the bullpen at the deadline and didn’t, which could ultimately cost them, but Matt Brash, Gabe Speier and Andres Muñoz are a quality group of high-leverage arms.

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“All of these teams are good,” Mariners broadcaster Gary Hill said Tuesday of the AL’s leaders during The Dugout on Seattle Sports’ Bump and Stacy. “There’s not a team in the American League, to me, that’s like, oh no, you’ve gotta play out of your minds to win a five- or seven-game series. I just don’t think that exists (in the AL).

“You could make a case for a number of different teams to go to the World Series, and I definitely think one of those teams is the Seattle Mariners.”