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# Mariners Bounced Back Many Times in 2025 Regular Season—Can Kirby, Mariners Do So Again?
- URL: https://www.emeraldcityspectrum.com/mariners-bounced-back-many-times-in-2025-regular-season-can-kirby-mariners-do-so-again/
- Published: 2025-10-10T04:18:50.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-08T05:57:51.000Z
- Author: Callaghan Bluechel
- Tags: Analysis, Mariners, ALDS, 2025 MLB Playoffs, Josh Naylor, Eugenio Suarez, Gabe Speier, Eduard Bazardo, George Kirby, Dan Wilson

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On June 11, the Seattle Mariners fell below .500, buried by an Eugenio Suárez grand slam, swept in Arizona, and now in third place in the AL West. It was their 13th loss in 17 games, a stretch where they scored 3.4 runs per game and gave up 5.5 on the other end. Extra-inning defeats littered that losing streak, many of them catastrophically demoralizing. Josh Naylor sunk Seattle on June 9 with a walk-off 11th-inning grand slam, while the M’s had already allowed six or more runs in two consecutive 10th innings at the end of May, the latter of which came on the heels of a blown three-run lead in the ninth.

Almost a month later, on July 10, Bryan Woo took a 5-0 lead and a budding no-hitter into the bottom of the eighth against the Yankees, only for Seattle’s three best relievers to crack one after another in the eighth, ninth, and 10th innings. Aaron Judge walked the M’s off—and completed the sweep—with a sacrifice fly, the runner only scoring because Cal Raleigh couldn’t apply the tag in time. No team had lost a game after entering the eighth inning with a five-plus run lead and a no-hitter since the Carter administration. Under pressure from the Mariners’ own fans, the team’s star center fielder announced he would be declining his invitation to the All-Star Game.

Between Aug. 13 and Aug. 20, the Mariners lost seven of eight road games and lost them *badly*, with a team ERA of 7.54 over that span as the pitchers gave up nearly two home runs per game. It was bad enough when they dropped two games to the bottom-feeding Orioles, worse when they embarrassed themselves in front of Williamsport little leaguers, and utterly humiliating when the Phillies mercilessly boat-raced them beside the waste-choked Schuylkill.

Another awful road tour worsened with a 4-1 loss to the Atlanta Braves, another mediocre-at-best team, on Sept. 5\. It was their fourth straight loss and their sixth defeat in seven games, and it seemed nothing—from team meetings to a mustache on Matt Brash—could stop their skid.

Those sound like the lowlights of an abhorrent season, reminiscent of the Bill Bavasi-era Mariners or today’s Colorado Rockies. Given only that information, one might come to the conclusion that the 2025 Mariners were a flat-out bad team. But looking at those moments from other angles, the team clearly wasn’t as bad as that. Even after their Arizona fiasco, they were still just two and a half games out of a playoff spot. The very same day as the final, depressing culmination of the theft of the Sonics—June 22, when the Thunder won the NBA championship—the Mariners got back into a playoff spot, remaining in that picture for the rest of the season. By the end of July, both of the Diamondbacks who had buried Seattle in June now donned Mariner blue. The later skids brought them to the brink of falling back out of the bottom of the wild card heap, but each time, they held on.

They held on. It took a short memory, adjustments, and simplification to swell the tides back up after these nadirs, but they did it every single time. A surge in the middle of September took them from sixth in the Junior Circuit to second, and from three and a half back of the AL West title to a three-game lead in the division by the end of the year. For the third time in five years, the Mariners ended the regular season at 90-72.

In Game 1 of the ALDS, the Mariners found their early lead neutralized by a Kerry Carpenter home run and their offense unable to come up in late frames during an 11-inning defeat. Yet they outlasted Tarik Skubal long enough to come up with a 3-2 victory in Game 2 and pummeled Detroit 8-4 in Game 3.

And yet just as they could not be counted out in their ruts, the M’s could not walk along the primrose path for too long. Game 4 opened well enough for Seattle, who struck first once more, but failing to pile on is a persistent vice for the Mariners. Detroit, down three by the bottom of the fifth, spent the final few innings taking Seattle’s relievers to church.

The series returns to Seattle on Friday night, each team one win away from the ALCS and one loss away from looking ahead to the pitchers and catchers report on Feb. 12, 2026\. With everything on the line, Mariners manager Dan Wilson announced on Friday that George Kirby would be the Game 5 starter. This is the second time this series that “Furious George” has been given the ball, with five innings of two run ball under his belt from Game 1, and the experience is something Seattle is looking for as a north star for a potential ALCS berth. Kirby, for his part, talked about “just trying to put up as many zeros as possible” as he prepared for the biggest start of his season.

"For one, the \[playoff\] atmosphere is awesome. I know that it will be the same tomorrow,” Kirby said. “But nothing changes, like I said: this time of year we’re all pitching with our best stuff.”

Whether it will be a normal Kirby start followed by bullpen usage or whether Luis Castillo will toss some innings out of the bullpen is unclear. But the starting pitching might be the most reliable part of Seattle’s game on Friday.

The M’s have already seen probable AL Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal three times in 2025, but it was his postseason start where Skubal did the best. Detroit’s ace only made two real mistakes in Game 2, both punished by Jorge Polanco, but Seattle can’t expect their offense to make anything comfortable against the league leader in more than half of the topline pitching stats. Compounding the uncertainty is the bad momentum: in the final four innings of Wednesday’s game, the team put up a lot of non-competitive at-bats, and the M’s have an intermittent habit of extending such stretches over periods of between 10 and 20 consecutive innings.

Another spot of worry stems from the bullpen. Seattle’s relievers pitched almost perfectly during the first three games of the series, but two of the guys who looked so spotless through Tuesday—Gabe Speier and Eduard Bazardo—found themselves completely shelled on Wednesday. It could just be a one-off bad outing for the both of them, but the question still lingers: have the Tigers figured out the ‘pen? Detroit’s hitters, after three games, could very well have picked up on their patterns. More worryingly, with all of the Mariners’ high-end relievers relying on a mix of a slider and a fastball of good but not elite velocity, it could be a case where when a team figures one out, they figure them all out. 

Perhaps that resilience will return, as it had all year. But for the first time, there really are no more chances. It wouldn’t have mattered if their previous losing ruts had continued on for a game or two more than they did during the regular season, and even after Game 1, they were still two games away from elimination. But if they lose on Friday, that’s it. Lights out.

The vibes, at least, are still good in Mariners-world.

“Everything’s still in front of us,” Wilson said. “It felt good that the guys were staying positive, because that's where we need to be, and I think that they understand what they need, they understand what’s at stake here, they understand the moment very well.”

How deep that understanding goes will be determined on Friday. Playoffs are a setting where instinct has a much greater say in outcome, where the polished exterior—partially or wholly—goes away, and the essential stuff people are made out of becomes obvious. Do they have what it takes, or do they not? Can they handle the pressure, or will they crumble? Are they truly resilient?

*Is this the year, or is it not?*