Did the Mariners have a tiny bit of momentum coming out of that homestand last week? You bet. Did they squander it all away immediately? Of course. After being swept in Miami, Seattle finds itself back at .500 and a half game behind the Rangers in the AL West. Just a year ago, the M\u2019s were coming off a rough sweep on the road heading into the final series before the All-Star break against the best team in the American League. In one of the big turning points in their season, they swept the Tigers to head into the midseason break on a high note. Now, they\u2019ve got that same opportunity in Tampa Bay.<\/p>\n
The Rays have been one of the biggest surprises in the AL this year. After back-to-back fourth place finishes in the AL East in 2024 and \u201825, it seemed like the competitive window Tampa Bay had been building since \u201819 was slamming closed. Instead, they\u2019re leading their division with the best record in the AL. They\u2019re definitely a bit out over their skis \u2014 they\u2019ve outperformed their Pythagorean record by five games and their Base Runs record by six games \u2014 but the wins they\u2019ve banked already mean they\u2019re almost guaranteed a postseason berth thanks to the mediocre playoff field behind them.<\/p>\n
The top three players in the Rays lineup carry most of the load. Junior Caminero has gone nuclear recently, blasting 12 home runs over his last 16 games. He\u2019s one of the most dangerous young power hitters in the game and this hot streak has pushed him into the middle of the AL MVP race. Yandy D\u00edaz is one of the few familiar names anchoring this lineup. He\u2019s the longest tenured Ray at this point and is in the midst of his best offensive season since 2023. Jonathan Aranda is cut from the same mold as D\u00edaz: a compact swing geared for hard, line drive contact and a solid approach at the plate. The rest of the lineup is filled with flexible role players and platoons which force opponents into uncomfortable matchups throughout the game.<\/p>\n
It feels like Nick Martinez is the most spiritually Rays player who hasn\u2019t actually played for Tampa Bay until this year. Over the past four years, he\u2019s admirably served as a part-time starter, part-time swingman, and even saw some high-leverage work at times. He\u2019s been solid no matter which role he\u2019s playing. That\u2019s the sort of flexibility the Rays covet, though they\u2019ve deployed him as a full-time starter out of their rotation this year. He\u2019s made the odd tradeoff to try and generate a lot more weak contact rather than swings and misses this year; he\u2019s emphasized his sinker over his four-seamer and increased the usage of his fantastic changeup. The topline results are there \u2014 his 2.61 ERA is third best in the AL \u2014 but all of his peripherals scream regression.<\/p>\n
Griffin Jax was an odd trade deadline acquisition last July. The Rays weren\u2019t in a position to buy, but they traded Taj Bradley straight up for Jax, who was one of the best setup men in baseball at the time. Jax struggled as a reliever with the Rays and the team decided to convert him to a starter on the fly in May. It\u2019s not the worst idea in the world; Jax has a deep repertoire that didn\u2019t fit a traditional high-leverage reliever. Things have worked out pretty well despite the odd timing of it all. Across 13 starts and 56 IP, he has a 2.89 ERA, 3.99 FIP, and 3.87 K\/BB out of the rotation.<\/p>\n
The Rays have been able to use Nick Martinez in their starting rotation because they already have a pitcher fulfilling Martinez\u2019s traditional role of part-time starter, part-time swingman, part-time high-leverage arm already. Ian Seymour started off last year in the bullpen but had a brief but successful stint as a starter to finish the season. Tampa Bay stuck him back in the bullpen to start this year and he eventually worked his way into a high-leverage role for a while. He\u2019s been working as a starter for the past month and that might be his most successful role to date. Over his last six appearances, he\u2019s allowed just 10 runs in 30.1 innings with an elite 6.5 strikeout-to-walk ratio.<\/p>\n
Despite getting crushed 13-1 on Wednesday, the Rangers pulled off a series win against the Angels with a walk-off win yesterday. That pushed them back into first place in the division. The Astros lost their series against the Nationals earlier this week, though they\u2019re still a game and half out in the Wild Card race. The two Texas teams meet this weekend in Arlington. The Athletics continue to tumble down the standings; they were swept by the Tigers this week, have lost six straight, and 14 of their last 17. They head to Chicago to face the White Sox ahead of the All-Star break.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Did the Mariners have a tiny bit of momentum coming out of that homestand last week? You bet.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":335893,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[137278,137279,135,137,136],"class_list":["post-335892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-seattle-mariners-game-information","tag-seattle-mariners-scores-standings","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335892\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/335893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}