Bluechel graduated from SPU in 2025 with a degree in Linguistics and Classics. Before joining Emerald City Spectrum, he wrote with the Falcon for two years between 2022 and 2024, covering SPU athletics as well as sports in the greater Seattle area.
Analysis
Embed from Getty Images One question has lit up the baseball world for months on end: who should be the American League MVP? Going into the season, there wasn’t much expectation that it would be anyone but Aaron Judge. The Yankees slugger had put up a 10+ Wins Above
Features
Embed from Getty Images SEATTLE, Wash. — Carpe diem! Those are Horace’s most famous words. Literally taken, the phrase means “harvest the day”, but seize the moment is perhaps a better translation. Those are the words, in English, that adorn a banner above the left field bleachers in T-Mobile
News
Embed from Getty Images SEATTLE, Wash. — The last time the Mariners clinched a division victory, it was Sept. 19, 2001. It was just the second game after the post-9/11 resumption of the season. Less than 24 hours later, George W. Bush addressed Congress and declared the Global War
News
Embed from Getty Images SEATTLE, Wash. — Neck-hairs upright, chills across their bodies of nearly four myriad people, every corporeal vessel—despite the spirits they carry having flown into the stratosphere long ago—stood in place to allow wondrous eyes to spot their night’s hero. Josh Naylor alone may
Analysis
Embed from Getty Images Words can hardly capture the seeming strangeness of the moment. Summer has turned to fall, and yet the Seattle Mariners are sitting pretty in the AL West. The M’s are fresh off the biggest sweep of the season against none other than the Houston Astros,
News
Embed from Getty Images HOUSTON, Texas — The collapse of the old baseball order is seemingly upon us. The mighty Astros, through whom the American League has run for what seems like an eon, lay gravely wounded on the marble steps of baseball’s postseason shrine with just one week left
Analysis
Embed from Getty Images Maybe, just maybe, the shoe is on the other foot. With just seven games remaining in the 2025 regular season, the Seattle Mariners are two games ahead of the Houston Astros for the AL West lead. The Mariners haven’t been in such a rosy situation
Analysis
Embed from Getty Images HOUSTON, Texas — A panoply of performances punctuated the Mariners’ 6-4 triumph over the Astros on Saturday, but two moments from the instant classic stand out above all others. In the marathon story of game two, they flank the meat of the action like thick leather
News
Embed from Getty Images HOUSTON, Texas — With one catch in Houston, Víctor Robles etched his name in the wall of Mariners who will never be forgotten. Daikin Park is nothing if not the graveyard of pretenders. Memories of late-inning Astros comebacks, specters of the Evil Empire’s umbral victories:
Analysis
Embed from Getty Images It’s a setting that is almost straight out of a semi-fantastical sports film: the two top teams in the AL West—one a widely-hated longtime champion, the other the pluckiest perennial underdogs in the sport—initiated a series on Friday from exactly the
Analysis
Embed from Getty Images HOUSTON, Texas — It’s still too early to tell what the biggest news from Friday night’s Houston opener was, but until Bryan Woo’s MRI comes back, the Mariners can guardedly celebrate a massive 4-0 win against their arch-nemesis. Any time your pitching
News
Embed from Getty Images HOUSTON, Texas — There are few things a ball club wants to see less. The ace of the rotation is pitching a gem, well on track to breeze through seven or even eight innings. He goes out for the sixth, but he seems to be in discomfort