It was always going to Game 7.<\/p>\n
The Mariners have given fans a magical ride this season, but they haven\u2019t always made it easy. Whether extra-inning games, or late-inning heroics, or winning streaks followed by losing streaks, or pushing things to the make-or-break moments, the Mariners have been playing Game 7 in one form or another\u2026forever, it feels like.<\/p>\n
It was always going to Game 7. But it wasn\u2019t always going to be this Game 7.<\/p>\n
Of all the narratives that have been spun this postseason\u2014the Blue Jays-Yankees rivalry, the brilliance of Shohei Ohtani, the otherworldly postseason performance of Vladimir Guerrero Jr.\u2014the Mariners don\u2019t fit neatly into any of them. There\u2019s Cal Raleigh\u2019s historic season, sure, but that interferes with the other narrative about Aaron Judge\u2019s historic career. The Mariners are what happens while narratives are being built around other teams.<\/p>\n
But they didn\u2019t back their way into this postseason. They weren\u2019t the best team in baseball this year\u2014they weren\u2019t always the best team in their division this season\u2014but they finished strong. They gave the Blue Jays, the best team in the American League, everything they could handle this series. In the end, it came down to one swing of the bat: one mistake pitch from the normally trusty Eduard Bazardo, someone who had bailed the Mariners out so many times this season. The Mariners were so close, tantalizingly close, to treading ground they\u2019ve never before stood on: their first pennant. Instead, it\u2019s the Blue Jays who get to make some history, making their first World Series appearance since 1993.<\/p>\n
The hard part is for a long time, it looked like the Mariners were going to win this game. George Kirby, after scuffling in his last start against the Blue Jays, made an adjustment. He pitched fearlessly in the zone, executed his pitches well, and didn\u2019t let the occasional hard-hit ball or bad-luck result back him off his plan. The one time he wavered, he got punished for it: maybe not wanting to surrender a first-pitch Springer Dinger, he pitched around Springer and issued a leadoff walk instead, which came around to score because the baseball gods were being real sticklers about following the letter of the law this series. But Kirby locked in after that and delivered three scoreless innings after that. He only struck out three, as the Blue Jays put a ton of balls in play, as is their wont, but he managed the contact and his own mindset and turned in one of his better starts of the season.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the offense steadily built a lead. They scored first, thanks to a leadoff double from Julio Rodr\u00edguez off Shane Bieber, who shut the Mariners down over six innings in his last outing. Josh Naylor knocked Julio in with a single for an early 1-0 lead. But last night the Mariners were undone by an unconscionable number of double plays, and there was another key one tonight, as the inning ended on a Jorge Polanco GIDP (despite the best efforts of Josh Naylor to literally put his body in between the ball and first base to break it up).<\/p>\n
We might be telling a different story about this game if the second inning had gone differently. The Mariners had Bieber on the ropes, with two straight base hits to lead off the inning. But J.P. Crawford bunted, giving up a precious first out, bringing up Leo Rivas, who struck out on three pitches, and Victor Robles, who went after the first pitch he saw for an easy, threat-killing groundout. It\u2019s not quite a GIDP, but spiritually it feels the same.<\/p>\n
The Mariners were able to claw two more runs out of this game, both on solo home runs from, who else, Julio and Cal Raleigh. But that old saying about solo home runs not killing you rang true tonight. Like I said, the baseball gods were insistent on playing by the rules tonight. Both those homers led off innings, so the Mariners didn\u2019t have an opportunity to get people on in front of Julio and Cal, but they also failed to extend those inning into stress innings for the Toronto pitchers. Once again, the offense just didn\u2019t do enough. Three runs might be enough in the regular season against regular teams. It was never going to be enough against the offensive powerhouse of the Blue Jays.<\/p>\n
Bryan Woo took over for Kirby and pitched two scoreless innings despite committing the sin of a leadoff walk of his own against the first batter he faced, insistently pounding Andr\u00e9s Gim\u00e9nez with sinkers inside that he refused to swing at; however, he did wind up facing the minimum thanks to a nifty play by J.P. Crawford. But Dan Wilson tried to coax one more inning out of his starter, and that\u2019s where things fell apart for the Mariners. Once again, Woo walked the first batter he saw, doing the same thing with Addison Barger he did with Gim\u00e9nez, working him inside only to walk him on five pitches. Isiah Kiner-Falefa, who killed the Mariners this series from the bottom of the lineup, showed bunt but got a sweeper hanging on the plate for a base hit up the middle. After an Gim\u00e9nez sac bunt, Wilson called on Eduard Bazardo to face George Springer. And with one swing of the bat\u2014one badly executed pitch\u2014the Blue Jays were suddenly leading, 4-3.<\/p>\n
The theme of punishing mistakes\/not punishing mistakes was a common thread this series, almost as much as the Mariners\u2019 strong pitching vs. the Blue Jays\u2019 relentless offense. But the Mariners pitching just wasn\u2019t strong enough, either from fatigue or just poor execution. Eduard Bazardo might have thrown the culprit pitch, but in every other loss this series, you could point to similar pitches\u2014not just mistake pitches from Mariners pitchers, but missed opportunities on mistake pitches from Mariners batters. At the end of the day, it just wasn\u2019t enough, even if the Mariners\u2014and their fans\u2014were the team that wanted it more. Maybe especially then.<\/p>\n
It was always going to Game 7. But it was never going to be won away from Seattle. There\u2019s no way Seattle fans, the longest-suffering in the sport, could or should be denied the joy of celebrating their first-ever American League pennant on their home turf. (It was also never going to be on a night when the Mariners were relegated to the alternate station on their own home network due to Seahawks Monday Night Football. The Mariners will be the only show in town on the night it finally happens.)<\/p>\n
It might not be next year. It might not be the year after. But this core has shown that they have the juice to be here again, and when they are, they\u2019ll be even more experienced. The pitching staff learned they don\u2019t have to carry the entire responsibility for a game\u2019s outcome; the offense learned they can be much more than just enough in wins. Most importantly, this year\u2019s team went further than any other Mariners team has before. They built the bridge, plank by plank, over a canyon of the unknown, and almost got all the way. They drew the map. Now it\u2019s up to the next iterations of this team to follow it. Fans, we know, will follow along no matter what.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was always going to Game 7. The Mariners have given fans a magical ride this season, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":240673,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,75160,99],"class_list":["post-240672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-mlb","tag-seattle-mariners-game-recaps","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240672","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=240672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}