Fistful of Narratives: Mariners, Astros Begin Battle for AL West
There will be no scoreboard watching this weekend for the Mariners and Astros. The two AL West franchises are butting heads in a pivotal three-game series that will more than likely determine the winner of the division. Despite the fact that both sides have a half dozen games in the week to follow, everyone in these Houston dugouts knows that this is for all the marbles: a series win for either team secures the tiebreaker and a one-game lead going into the final week of the season; a sweep all but sinches the division for the winners and forces the losers to the edge of the third wild card alongside the Cleveland Guardians.
All the chips are down, all the cards on the table; all that’s left is to see who has the better hand. Will the Astros maintain their long reign in the wild, wild West—or will there be a new sheriff in town at last?
Unforgiven: Astros seek to retain their long-held dominance another year and get a better shot at a second clean ring.
Almost a decade ago, the Houston Astros rose from the depths of ineptitude to become the undisputed king of the AL West, reigning from a Crawford Box throne. For years, there was little hope for anyone else to come close to the top, and the rest of the division was forced to settle for Wild Card scraps.
But the king is older now. Once upon a time, his retinue could be compared to that of King Arthur, staffed with the likes of Jose Altuve, Carlos Correa, Josh Reddick, George Springer, Alex Bregman, Marwin González, Justin Verlander, Dallas Keuchel, and Ken Giles.
That was when the Astros won their first World Series. In baseball’s Axial Age, when the parity of the early 2010s made way for the titans of the past 10 years, Houston became the biggest titan of them all. From 2017 through 2023, the Astros played in every single ALCS. Four out of seven times, they made it to the World Series. Two out of four times, they won it all.
Yet they made an infamous deal with the devil to get that first ring. The fallout was muted by COVID and no players were punished, but there was a deserved air of inauthenticity (rather lightly put) around Houston’s 2017 championship.
No matter for the Astros, who shrugged off the fiery hatred of the rest of MLB and grew another crop of powerhouse players. Like Michael Corleone in his quest to go legitimate, the Astros sought a newer, cleaner ring. And in 2022, that newer, far more likeable set of studs—with names such as Yordan Alvarez, Kyle Tucker, Chas McCormick, Michael Brantley, and Jeremy Peña—got that untainted bit of glory.
But just as with Michael Corleone, nothing the Astros could do would drive away the stench of the past; only Father Time can do that. Bregman, Altuve, and Gurriel won their second ring, but many corners of baseball will never forgive them for their first.
Seemingly forever unforgiven, Houston is looking to at least stave off the catastrophe of falling out of the throne, of becoming like everyone else.
High Noon: Mariners look to finally avenge their defeats and take the West for the first time in a dozen years.
For the Mariners? Well, to paraphrase Winston Churchill: if the Astros played a game in Hell, there would be many at least favorable references to the Devil in T-Mobile Park.
On June 18, 2024, the Seattle Mariners held a 10-game lead over both the Astros and the defending World Series champion Texas Rangers. 31 days and 24 games later, that lead was gone. The Astros won the division.
It was an even tighter race right to the end in 2023, but it had the same result. On July 23, 2023, the Texas Rangers led the Astros by four and a half games, the Angels by nine games, and the Mariners by 10. But it became a race in August, and on August 25, the M’s caught up to Texas and even pulled up by one game two days later.
But that fleeting moment at the top of the hill soon came tumbling down. Seattle never got more than one game up in the division, and on September 5, the Mariners fell under the AL West lead and never regained it, though the three squads remained separated by a razor-thin margin until the last few days of the season. At the end of the year, Texas and Houston both stood at 90-72, giving the Astros the division on the tiebreaker. Seattle, meanwhile, had nothing, as they were two games back of both other AL West teams and one game behind the Toronto Blue Jays for the third wild card.
And in those other years? 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2022 each ended with the Astros at more than 100 wins. Houston “only” won 95 times in the 2021 regular season, but the M’s never really threatened that division lead, either.
From 2015 to 2022, the Astros and Mariners played each other 143 times in the regular season. 94 of those games—65.7 percent—went to Houston. Many of those years were bad seasons for the Mariners regardless, but terrible team or no terrible team, winning one out of 19 in 2019 stung.
Yordan’s homer stung more. The Mariners and Astros played each other in the divisional round of the postseason in 2022. The first game was in Houston, and the Mariners, fresh off a thrilling comeback against the Toronto Blue Jays, went up to a 7-3 lead after seven innings. But the Astros chipped two away in the eighth with a Bregman blast and then got two men on with two men out in the bottom of the ninth. Despite Paul Sewald’s strength all season long, Robbie Ray came out in relief to pitch to Yordan Alvarez.
It went down as perhaps the worst managerial decision in Mariners history. Alvarez’ 438-foot howitzer shattered the spine of that Mariners team, who went on to score two runs and bat .132 in their next 27 innings on their way to getting swept.
In the years since, Seattle has improved against Houston in the regular season (totaling a 22-14 record against their rivals in all their contests over the past three years), but in the end, Houston got the last laugh in 2023 and 2024.
Now comes a chance to truly flip the script. Every other time it truly mattered, events fell the Astros’ way. Now, it is high noon; the eyes of the baseball world are upon the Mariners and Astros alone. Can Seattle finally grab ahold of destiny for themselves? Can they finally take revenge?