MLB Baseball Savant<\/a>.<\/p>\nCatcher Cal Raleigh is an AL MVP candidate, thanks to his 60 home runs but Eugenio Su\u00e1rez blasted 49, Julio Rodr\u00edguez added 32, and Randy Arozarena blasted 27. They will look to continue a red-hot September that saw them go 17-8 and win their first AL West crown since 2001.<\/p>\n
To do so, they face a Detroit Tigers team whose offense has been hit-or-miss, with a 23.9 percent strikeout rate that supports that. The Tigers have not needed an abundance of offense to win games in 2025, though, thanks to a rotation headlined by Skubal, who followed up his superb Cy Young campaign a year ago with one that should net him the award again.<\/p>\n
Skubal played Cleveland three times in 12 days and did not appear fatigued in the slightest, striking out 14 in Tuesday’s Wild Card start and giving up one earned run. The Mariners should face the 28-year-old lefty twice in the divisional series and how they navigate his stuff, and whether they can produce offensively, could very well dictate the shape of the series.<\/p>\n
Then there is the question of rest.<\/p>\n
The Mariners were one of the best teams in baseball over the last two months of the season and had momentum on their side as it came to an end. <\/p>\n
They have been at home since the conclusion of the regular season, awaiting their first opponent. In recent years, we have seen the adverse effect of having the bye, with teams struggling to flip the switch back on.<\/p>\n
It happened a year ago in Philadelphia, and in 2023, none of the four teams with the bye were able to advance to the World Series.<\/p>\n
If the Tigers can get another exquisite start from their ace, and the Mariners struggle with rust early on, Detroit could very well steal the first game of the series.<\/p>\n
The Mariners’ rotation is no joke, either. That unit had the fifth-best ERA in the big leagues in September at 3.55. The bullpen was just as good, with the game’s sixth-best 3.12 ERA. <\/p>\n
If they can navigate manager AJ Hinch’s propensity for new, unique lineups, and the offense comes through, the Mariners will cash their ticket to their first league championship appearance in 24 years. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Detroit Tigers collapsed down the stretch, losing the AL Central division crown to the Cleveland Guardians. They…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198398,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,99],"class_list":["post-198397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}