Seven Games Left: Where Mariners Stand Going into Game Three in Houston
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 since 2001. According to Fangraphs, Seattle enters Sunday’s game with a 99.5 percent chance to make the playoffs and a 92.8 percent chance to win the AL West. Their magic numbers both to win the division and make the playoffs are both five, and all probabilities point to the likelihood that the West will have a new sheriff in town. Three of Seattle’s remaining seven games are at home against a hapless Colorado Rockies team that is even worse on the road, so the Mariners have ample opportunity to pad their lead over the season’s final week.
Houston, however, has been in a similar situation before. With five games left in the 2023 regular season, the Astros sat two and a half games back of the Texas Rangers. Houston’s rival to the north had an 86.7 percent chance to win the division, while the Astros’ odds sat just north of one in 10. Yet, with the tiebreaker already in hand, the Astros went on a four-game winning streak and took back their crown.
It was the Mariners who played spoiler that year, taking two of three from the Rangers in the final series of the season. Yet Texas got the last laugh, besting the Astros in a seven-game ALCS on their way to the first World Series title in franchise history.
Still, as had been the case five straight full seasons beforehand and as was the case the year after that, the AL West ran through Houston.
Two results in Daikin Park this weekend have put that truism in serious doubt. The Mariners pitched and solo homered their way to a 4-0 opening victory on Friday night to set the tone. Saturday saw a valiant comeback attempt that brought to mind all the times the Astros have rocketed from the ranks of the dead to claim an improbable yet inevitable victory. The ghost of Yordan Alvarez surely lingered most fiercely in the minds of the Mariners as they saw a Jeremy Peña fly ball land in the Crawford Boxes for a grand slam to reduce the visitors’ lead from six runs to two. And yet, the Mariners closed out the win with perhaps the greatest play of Víctor Robles’ career, a miraculous diving catch to kick off a game-ending double play.
Such a defeat would demoralize most teams in this league beyond repair, but the Astros are not most teams. You can never truly count them out of any chase until there is no more mathematical chance.
The Mariners have one more opportunity to put a near-final nail in the Astros’ coffin on Sunday night, and it’s Logan Gilbert on the bump to start. He has pitched well in his three September starts, racking up a 2.20 ERA with 20 strikeouts and just three walks over 16 ⅓ innings pitched. However, he has often been worked out games in in the fifth or sixth inning, and with the workload the bullpen has taken on over the past two games, the M’s will be looking for some more innings from Gilbert.
Houston’s starter, Jason Alexander, is a somewhat cushier target for the Mariners. Although he has a 2.76 ERA since the Astros picked him up on waivers after a blowup start for the Athletics, his 4.26 FIP over the same timespan indicates that he has benefited from a fair amount of luck. Alexander, for his part, has created a fair amount of that luck, relying on sinkers and changeups to get ground ball outs with good regularity.
With the aforementioned bullpen exhaustion, the Mariners will want to jump on Alexander early on Sunday night and take the pressure off the pitchers. A sweep is in sight—will Seattle take it?