Miller Start Goes South, Mariners Lose 19-2 to Cubs
Bryce Miller’s previous start had become, for a given and quite load-bearing definition of “worst”, the worst loss in Mariners history, a 22-0 thrashing that began to be as humorous as it was maddening.
Going by that same run differential metric, Sunday was the fourth worst loss in team history, only behind their Milwaukee calamity, a 21-1 loss in Houston in 2019, and a 20-3 loss in Detroit back in 1993. It became the worst run differential ever in a Mariners home game, beating out three 16-1 losses.
The score was 19-2. Both teams left this series disappointed. Seattle, despite winning two out of three, had long since run out of games to punt, whereas the Cubs outscored their opponents 28-13 and lost the series.
“Today ended up similar to the other day, just kinda got out of hand, and those are tough ones,” said M’s skipper Dan Wilson. “Our team has shown the ability to flush them.”
While it is true that these awful losses haven’t set off any massive avalanches of failure, they haven’t been able to build any momentum from their successes, either. That’s why Sunday’s loss dropped them to 62-69, a record that would knock them out of commission in a normal year but one that barely keeps them afloat in the chase for the worst AL West since 1994, when the best team at the time of the strike was the 52-62 Texas Rangers.
Kade Anderson Debuts, Randy Arozarena Delivers as Mariners Walk Off Cubs Again
Looking to gain ground in a tight wild-card race, Seattle welcomed the Chicago Cubs back into T-Mobile Park after walking them off the night before. The Mariners elected to go the exciting route again, advancing from a walk-off single to a walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth.
This was the Randy Arozarena game. Coming into the night, everyone thought the story would be about the phenom pitcher making his debut for the Mariners. Randy had other ideas, blasting a two-run home run 404 feet to dead center. If Seattle makes the playoffs this year, this game could mark the turning point of the season.
Seattle saw its top prospect, and one of the top prospects in all of baseball, make a promising debut. The bullpen was also able to keep the game close to set up a dramatic ninth inning.
“It Just Got Out of Hand”: Mariners Suffer Most Lopsided Loss - 22-0 - in Team History
With one out and the bases loaded in the bottom of the eighth, Christian Yelich sent a routine fly ball to Julio Rodríguez. The Mariners center fielder caught it for an out and Andrew Vaughn trotted home for a Brewers run. Simple, right? Like someone opening their front door to go out for another day of work, just as they have innumerable times before and just as they will countless times after.
It is only when zooming out that a picture of utter mayhem, calamity, and chaos comes into view. That was the 20th run the Brewers scored on Monday. That was Yelich’s second at-bat of the inning and the 11th batter that infielder Leo Rivas faced in his one-inning, nine-run pitching stint. Rodríguez was so checked out that, seemingly thinking there were already two outs, he tossed the ball into the crowd - an action that awarded each runner two bases and thus scored Jonathan Ornelas from second while moving William Contreras to third.
Luis Lara, who had earlier in the inning logged his first major-league home run to make it “only” 16-0, capped off the rout with a run-scoring single. Garrett Mitchell logged a merciful third out to end the eighth and conclude the beating of a horse that was barely even skeletal by that point.
The final score was 22-0.
The good news for Seattle is that whether by a gulf of 22 runs or one, all losses count the same. The merciless beatdown may have counted for two and a half losses on their Pythagorean record, but their actual record only went from 59-66 to 59-67. They need to win both remaining games of the series, but they’re somehow still in this.
That doesn’t make such a putrid loss any less embarrassing. What’s perhaps more surprising is that there was a time when this game was close.
“We Know Where We Are At”: Lone M’s Win in Bronx Shows Blueprint Despite Not Being Enough by Itself
Over the past seven games, the Mariners have found themselves outscored 34-11. It was 34-10 going into Thursday’s afternoon contest in the Bronx; the team rode a stellar six-inning, seven-punchout, no-run start from Logan Gilbert to break an ugly six-game losing streak. The spell, starting in Seattle against the Tigers, had seen them finally stop treading water - because they had sunk like a stone. Were it not for some unexpected production on Wednesday (ultimately in vain as the pitching gave up 10 runs that day), the team’s scoring would have been better described not in runs per game but games per run, Anthony Bennett style.
When things go this pear-shaped for a baseball team, a lot of fingers get pointed and plenty of blame gets cast. The Mariners are 57-65, having barely avoided two straight sweeps to the two top teams in the AL; there’s certainly have plenty of blame to go around. No one is hitting, the team’s hurlers aren’t putting up quality starts, and even when they have a lead, their bullpen blows up and another ugly L goes up on the calendar. Perhaps the finger can go at skipper Dan Wilson, or president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto, or the hitting crew of Edgar Martinez and Kevin Seitzer, or to strength and conditioning, or a player development side that can’t seem to turn good players into great ones, or an analytics department that seems to follow more than it leads, or owner John Stanton. Or maybe everybody, or maybe nobody.
The players blame people far more familiar: themselves. For a team that constantly talks about the importance of belief, the bluntness of their self-doubt is a bullhorn.
“It starts with me. I’m awful,” Cal Raleigh noted after their Tuesday 4-1 loss to open the series in New York. Over the course of the 2026 season, Raleigh has a .159/.267/.297 slash line, good for a worse batting average and OPS+ than all but one of Dave Valle’s Mariners seasons. Raleigh hadn’t been scheduled to speak to media that day, he simply held an impromptu presser where he called himself horrid in every possible way. Can you blame him for feeling like that?
Winning 1-0 on a Thursday Weston Wilson homer won’t meaningfully change things by itself; the M’s have seen too many would-be turnarounds go belly-up to believe that one win means the job is finished. That was true when they were a pair of games over .500, that was true when they were a pair of games under. 500, and it’s still true now that they’re seven games underwater.
Mariners Fall Lifeless for Shutout No. 11, Loss No. 60; Team Once Again at Brink
Less than 24 hours after another game that seemed like a potential jumping off point for the streak Seattle has sought all year, the team found themselves turned into a semi-liquid mass of pulp as the Tigers delivered one of the worst beatdowns all year: an 11-0 loss and the 11th time that the team has been shut out in the 2026 season.
The game was notable for being managed by bench coach Manny Acta, with Dan Wilson suspended one game due to Gabe Speier’s intentional hit-by-pitch on Wednesday. But it didn’t look like any sort of turned page for Seattle, who fell asleep at the dish after falling behind the Tigers early on, grounding into four double plays and failing to get an extra-base hit.
It was the 34th time this season that the Mariners have gone without an extra-base hit, most in MLB by three games. They’re on pace for 47 such games this season, which would land them in a 13-way tie for 34th most in the integration era. It would be the most ever in the 21st century.
Those extra base hits were the difference in the series against the Tigers, as the one game they managed to get more than singles, they scored four runs and logged their 56th win of the season. In the two games they didn’t, they scored zero runs in total. Thursday’s loss in particular came as a gut-punch, on the heels of benches-clearing near-fireworks on Wednesday.
The Mariners offense came crashing down to earth on Thursday, failing to score any runs.
For much of Wednesday’s game, the M’s were as scoreless as they had been on Tuesday and would be on Thursday. The scoreless tie was broken by a three-run homer from Julio Rodríguez in the sixth and Colt Emerson rocked a bomb in the eighth to cap off Wednesday’s 4-2 win, but that turned out to be all the runs the team scored in the series.
One Big Thing Continues to Plague Mariners’ Pitching Staff
On paper, most consider the Seattle Mariners to have one of the best pitching staffs in all of baseball. Certainly, that is true of their starting rotation. They lead all of baseball in innings pitched by their starters, while ranking seventh in starter WAR and eighth in starter ERA.
In an age of baseball where it’s a “five and dive” approach for starters - or going five innings and turning things over to flamethrowing reliever after flamethrowing reliever - the Mariners’ rotation is a bit of a throwback.
The bullpen certainly has some bright spots as well. Gabe Speier, Jose Ferrer, and Andres Munoz make up a solid back end of the bullpen. Seattle has the sixth-best bullpen ERA in MLB. Yet, there is something missing. Over the last 30 days, the Mariners’ team ERA has trickled down to 21st in the league. Sure, some of that is due to the likes of Matt Brash, Cooper Criswell, and Carlos Vargas battling injuries. That affects the overall depth of the bullpen, which is getting more and more exposed as a result.
Bats Clock Out Early, Mariners Drop Five Games Under in Game 111
The Mariners are five games under .500 for the second time this year. The first time was 25 games into the season, when they had a 4-9 record after an ugly sweep at the hands of the Texas Rangers. From then until the 62nd game of the year on June 2, they went 23-14 to take the division away from the Athletics and put themselves in the catbird seat as the team everyone expected to pull away with the West.
Two months later, the story of the AL West in 2026 could be summarized by paraphrasing the Sumerian King List: “Who was in first? Who was not in first?” But you don’t need a familiarity with 4,000-year-old Mesopotamian literature to see how the Mariners have dropped the ball and allowed the Rangers, then the Astros, to climb into first place. The bats have gone awfully quiet in the nearly 50 games since, with a .225/.297/.352 team slash line from June 3 to July 30. By the time the M’s faced off against the Twins on Friday, they were 53-57 and uncomfortably close to falling out of the race entirely.
When Mitch Garver struck out and finished a 5-3 loss, the situation declined even further. The M’s are now three games back of the division-leading Astros, two and a half games back of the Rangers for second place, and three games back of the Twins and Guardians for the third wild card spot. They are guaranteed a losing season record against the Guardians and Rangers - effectively making them a game further behind those teams - while one more loss to the Twins would lock in that same losing tiebreaker with them, too.
The bats fell asleep for six innings and missed opportunities throughout.
If the Mariners ever got the chance to wish into existence one simple change to their team, it might be prudent to choose the ability to punish mistakes. Underneath much of it, Seattle has a remarkably bad performance against pitches right down the middle: against pitches in the middle square of the strike zone - imagine it split like a tic-tac-toe grid - the M’s went into Friday night with the lowest batting average (.275), fifth-lowest slugging (.552), and sixth-lowest hard-hit rate (49.1%). These become even more stark when sorting for just fastball-type pitches: the lowest batting average (.279), third-lowest slugging (.522), and fifth-lowest hard-hit rate (51.9%).
Part of it is due to some bum luck, with a .234 batting average on balls in play (BABIP) on such pitches; one might imagine it would coalesce towards the .306 leaguewide middle-middle BABIP. The following graph shows the difference in spray locations between the Mariners and the team with both the highest batting average and highest slugging on pitches down the middle, the Phillies:
Mariners Drop First Game of Critical Rangers Series
Every contest is an opportunity for a team to advance one game in the standings. The Mariners entered Friday night’s game having won 51 of those opportunities and lost 52 of them. They hadn’t given much indication at all that they could transform themselves into a competent, consistent squad during those 103 games, with every speck of momentum mired in a following slump, and with the team seemingly unwilling to impose themselves on the game.
At times, it appears that the team really wishes to turn things around. At others, they seem convinced that they can’t really control or influence what happens during a game. Skipper Dan Wilson didn’t touch upon the divisional implications of the loss, instead focusing on an offense that he saw as indicative of an upswing and a level of fight he admired.
“The score didn’t go our way tonight, but I thought we did a lot of good things offensively. We particularly really put a lot of pressure on it, a lot of pitches on. I thought they took their walks when we needed them, and able to get some hits and create a lot of traffic,” Wilson said. “I like the way they continue to fight back as they always do. Got behind after the solo shot, came back in it, got behind after the two-run shot, and were able to jump right back in it again. And they kept fighting ‘til the end.”
There is a difference between finding silver linings and blinding oneself to one’s own flaws. If that was the Mariners fighting, it goes a good ways to explain their season-long lethargy. It may have been one of the least close one-run games ever played, with the score only reaching 5-4 in the ninth because they lucked into a two-out wild pitch. Once they fell behind 5-3 in the bottom of the sixth, they had two total baserunners for the final three innings of the game.
This is flatly not how a contending team plays against a divisional opponent, let alone one that the world fancied as runaway division champions before the season. Their autopsy for Friday’s game has long since started to resemble an autopsy for the whole season, though as has held true the entire year, the other American League teams have been too busy immuring their own chances to take advantage of Seattle walling itself off.
Bats Take Nine-Inning Nap as Giants Pummel Mariners 7-0
A little over a year before Friday night, Julio Rodríguez announced that he would not participate in an All-Star Game he had been selected for, noting he would rather focus on improving his own game to a better standard.
Rodríguez wasn’t on the field on Friday, recovering from a concussion sustained earlier that month when a Nolan Schanuel throw bounced off the back of his head. Concussions are a case of needing however much time he needs in order to recover from the knock. But it means he can’t lead by example as he did after the Mariners’ horrific loss in the Bronx last year.
And it seems no other hitter is willing to put himself forward in such a way. The starting pitchers have borne the brunt of the blame when they’ve let the team down, especially Bryan Woo. But aside from some strong words from Cal Raleigh after a pungent loss in Cleveland - words that seemingly only went heeded for a six-game stretch - it has been crickets from the team leaders and an utter lack of urgency from the manager.
“It’s the first one back, and I think guys got back in the groove today and looking for us to come out tomorrow and have different results,” said M’s skipper Dan Wilson, “Obviously, you want to get off on the second half with a win, but just weren’t able to get anything going offensively and tomorrow we get a chance to turn that around.”
Those may have been Wilson’s strongest words after his team lost 7-0 to a shambolic San Francisco Giants squad that entered the game 41-55, second only to the Colorado Rockies in NL West helplessness. Sure, one of their few bright spots, a 21-year-old masher named Bryce Eldrige, did some of the damage. But the M’s made visiting starter Landen Roupp, a C-list pitcher on a good day, look like a veritable barnburner.
It can’t go on like this - well, in the immortal words of Mick McCarthy, it can - but the M’s won’t be a playoff team or even a .500 team if it does.
Bryce Miller Gem Gives M’s Sweep of Halos Despite Absent Offense
The last time the M’s and Angels faced each other, it was one of many disappointing series for the Mariners during the first half of the season. Seattle won the first game of the set, but as they would do several times in the following weeks and months, they dropped the final two and lost the series as their offense died and the pitching got ambushed.
Seattle’s bats may have fallen incredibly silent on Thursday evening as the two squads finished their three-game series the day after both took a rest due to a 2026 World Cup game a block away, but Bryce Miller beared down once again as he utterly stymied the Angels’ hitters inning after inning on his way to seven frames of brilliance. That, more than anything, was the bedrock of the team’s 1-0 win.
Bryce Miller didn’t give up a hit in the first six innings as his excellent year continued.
Even with his innings being limited with the piggybacks, Miller had been one of the Mariners’ most fearsome pitchers since returning from the injured list. His expert mixture of a four-seamer, slider, splitter throughout his starts produced tough scenes for opposing hitters.
Miller had a bit of a tougher time in his previous outing against the Pirates, however. His three earned runs in 5 ⅔ innings were perhaps downstream of the fact that the slider was conspicuously absent from his workhorse usage, with the hurler reliant on just his four-seamer and splitter for 59% of his offerings.
And yet Miller did much the same against the Angels on Thursday to clearly better results. Halo hitters went down one after another as they couldn’t effectively differentiate between his two go-to offerings. The visitors had 10 whiffs and five strikeouts during the first three innings, with Miller at 35 pitches through those frames. A big part of this was the fact that he could control his splitter effectively once his (already minimal) opening jitters were over.
Mariners No-Hit Through 6, Late Comeback Comes Up Short in 6-2 Loss to Red Sox
Coming off a gratifying shutout victory against the Baltimore Orioles, the momentum slowed down for the Seattle Mariners on Friday night. Facing an underperforming Red Sox team limping into the Emerald City, Seattle looked primed to rattle off a win streak against a Boston squad fresh off suffering a sweep by the Toronto Blue Jays.
Boston had other plans however, capitalizing on poor pitching decisions, an inability to hit lefties, and a lack of bench depth, as the Sox punished the M’s mistakes at every turn to open the series with a 6-2 win at T-Mobile Park.
Julio Rodriguez homered in the ninth inning to drive in two runs, but it proved far too little, too late. Outside of the centerfielder’s blast, the Mariners had little to celebrate on Juneteenth as they donned their popular Steelhead jerseys, paying homage to the Negro League team that predates the M’s.
What went wrong in the Mariners’ latest defeat?
Mariners’ Tuesday Bombshells: Rotating Piggyback, Pereda Sent Down, Arozarena to IL
Tuesday ended in a solid 3-1 win for the Mariners at home against the Orioles, but a flurry of roster moves and decisions may have been even more hectic for the team than that night’s action. The team called Cal Raleigh back up to the MLB roster, announced a first-of-its-kind rotating piggyback, and had to call up a guy who had taken four total plate appearances above High-A ball in his entire career thanks to a seemingly bizarre lack of preparation on Randy Arozarena’s injury status.
Mariners general manager Justin Hollander, speaking with media Tuesday afternoon, noted the inordinate severity of the injury situation as compared to other bugs he had dealt with in his tenure with the team; he noted that Luke Raley and Josh Naylor were both dealing with issues and that Matt Brash, Carlos Vargas, and Cooper Criswell would be out until around the trade deadline. Brendan Donovan is set to start running work in the week, but these persistent injuries are not a good sign. This is especially true of Raley’s lower back tightness, given that similar injuries ended up shattering his 2025 season well after he was officially healed.
The mechanistic plan to have each of Seattle’s six starting pitchers rotate the piggyback amongst themselves is many things, but to use a judgmentally neutral term, it is unprecedented. It is also seemingly contradictory that the same organization that came up with a plan as intricate as a rotating piggyback also waited until a gameday to MRI Arozarena despite having a rest day to do so; had they done the simple thing of scheduling an earlier MRI, they would have been able to call Connor Joe back up as is clearly their long-term plan.
But what’s done is done, as bizarre as the events were. What should be made of these decisions, and what do they mean for the near future of the Mariners’ season?
Analysis: Why Continue Piggyback When Tactic Lacks Intended Benefit?
From the score of the game itself, the Mariners’ performance on Monday against the A’s was as good as they could hope for. Seattle took advantage of some defensive miscues in the top of the third to scratch across a pair of runs before the wheels flew off Sacramento starter Aaron Civale’s bus with two outs and the team wound up with a 6-0 lead before the end of the frame and a 9-2 win by the end of the game.
But that explosion of runs papered over some clear tension as the team continued to use its tactic of piggybacking two of their six starters. To be abundantly clear, the tension itself isn’t the main reason why the idea is flawed - that would be the self-imposed constraints on player usage - but given that it seems to have been adopted in order for such tension to be avoided, the uneasiness was notable and instructive.
Bryce Miller had spun a gem given his pitch limitations on Tuesday, May 19, going 5 ⅔ innings in the first of Seattle’s attempted piggybacked starts. The game fell apart in the ninth as the M’s tried to stretch the piggyback beyond the point where it made sense, but Miller’s performance itself during that game was a good sign.
Mariners Release Opening Day Roster; Crawford, Miller Notably Absent with Injury
With opening day right around the corner for the Seattle Mariners - at 7:10 p.m. Pacific on Thursday against the Guardians - the team has released its first 26-man roster for the 2026 season. The top of the depth chart, of course, is very much all over the M’s roster, from returning superstars in Cal Raleigh and Julio Rodríguez to new additions like Brendan Donovan and Jose A. Ferrer.
But of course it is not all sunshine and roses for the defending AL West champions. Longtime shortstop J.P. Crawford is out for the beginning of the year with a shoulder injury while Bryce Miller is working through an injury of his own, leaving holes in the middle infield and the back of the rotation. Leo Rivas is going to get some playing time at short in the meantime (and perhaps Cole Young might swivel
Assessing Three March Mariner Concerns Ahead of 2026 Regular Season
If the Seattle Mariners started the 2026 regular season 6-16-1 (ignore the tie), things would probably be nearing panic mode in T-Mobile Park. But given that it’s Spring Training, the record isn’t all that concerning as Opening Day begins. But from injury concerns to slow starts for stars, there are some points of worry for the M’s as the season comes into view. Just how worrying are these signs, however? Is there any meaning to be derived from them?
Concern 1: Injury questions for players up and down the roster.
Concern level: 4/10
The most-discussed injury question for the upcoming season has been Bryce Miller, and it seems likely by this point that he won’t be ready to start the regular season. The Mariners have Emerson Hancock and Cooper Criswell both available to fill in the fifth starter role - and I personally expect they’ll start with Hancock, with Criswell in the tank if Hancock again struggles as a starter - but they at least have some good indications due to both players’ performance in Spring Training. That doesn’t necessarily mean much for the regular season, especially in the top-line stats such as ERA and FIP, but the M’s have to be impressed with Hancock’s feel for the ball.
Mariners Postseason Hero Bryce Miller Once Again Dealing With Injury Bug
The worst fear of any baseball team with high expectations is injuries. Especially when those injuries hit the starting pitching. The starting rotation is a delicate ecosystem on any team.
For the Seattle Mariners, Bryce Miller struggled through most of the 2025 season. It was a year of stops and starts, totaling in 18 starts, with just eight coming after June 6. Miller dealt with right elbow inflammation, including a bone spur that required time off. When he did pitch, he wasn’t his usual effective self, posting a 4-6 record with a 5.68 ERA, 74 strikeouts, and a 1.41 WHIP over 90 1/3 innings. His strikeout rate dropped significantly, and advanced metrics showed regression with higher hard-hit rates and an elevated FIP.
Simply put, there was a clear struggle with his health throughout last season that undoubtedly impacted his performance.
Three X-Factors in Mariners’ Success For 2026
For the Seattle Mariners to return to the playoffs in 2026, it’s obvious which usual suspects have to have strong seasons. Cal Raleigh, while unfair to be expected to mash 60 homers again, needs to be among the league leaders in home runs with a slugging percentage at least near .500. Julio Rodriguez needs to be a 30-30 threat again (30 home runs/30 stolen bases). The top three of the rotation need to be reliable and healthy. Andres Muñoz needs to keep throwing gas and stay healthy as well. That’s all a given.
But to get further than the Divisional Round this time around, Seattle will need contributions from other sources to get over the top. Which X-Factors, if they perform perhaps better than expected, could drive the Mariners finally to their first World Series berth?
Mariners Repeat or Astros Return; Who is AL West’s Deadliest Warrior? Analyzing Division as 2026 Season Approaches
Ever since the Mariners’ dramatic September sweep on Houston’s home ground that all but sealed the division, 2026 has shaped up to be a close rematch between the two teams. Which team, if any, has the edge going into the season?
Does Mariners’ Bryce Miller Have Brighter Days Ahead after Injury-Laden 2025 Slump?
After Mariners starter Bryce Miller dealt with a decline in production downstream of his elbow inflammation in 2025, what can be expected of the Texan right-hander? What might his role be in a 2026 team hungry for a championship?
Geno Breaks Out Rye Bread and Mustard in Game 5 Thriller; M’s One Win Away from Fall Classic
With their backs to the wall for what seemed like the 100th time in 2025, the Seattle Mariners came up big in a Game 5 for the history books. How did the M’s rise again from the grave on Friday afternoon?
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