Four Mariners Playoff Scenarios in Final 21 Games
To say the Seattle Mariners have had a bad run of it is like saying the sun is warm. They have lost 15 of their last 21 games and are on the verge of losing their playoff spot entirely—something that would bring them into familiar territory as September grinds on.
The way I see it, there are four paths the Mariners can go down during the final stretch of the season. Two of them are scenarios I would consider likely, while the other two are more edge case items in case things go really bad or really well. But we’ll go worst to first as we size up the team’s fork in the road.
Scenario I: Merciful Crash-Out
One of the key things to remember in sports—especially baseball—is the phrase “you’re never as good as you look when you win and you’re never as bad as you look when you lose.” Despite the Mariners being awful on their last two road trips, this still isn’t the Rockies.
But in the Merciful Crash-Out scenario, they imitate the Rockies all the way to the barn. You’ll know this kind of thing is happening if the Mariners fall off the playoff map and just keep on tumbling after that ignominious milestone has been reached. If the M’s finish the season with a sub-.500 record (say, 78-84, which would mean going 5-16 to round out the year) or are eliminated at least a week before the last day of the season, that will constitute a Merciful Crash-Out.
But why is it merciful? Well, it would shed the agonizing suspense that tortured the Pacific Northwest in three of the last four years. You would know what you’re looking at when you see the 2025 Mariners, and in this case, it would be a team that nosedived from World Series contention all the way to irrelevance.
Personal estimated likelihood: 15 percent
All in all, I don’t really think this is the most likely scenario, because as I said earlier, you’re never as bad as you look when you lose. We know that this lineup and pitching staff has a ceiling well above their current performance. For them to actually finish the year below .500, it would take a big measure of throwing in the towel early.
Scenario II: The More Things Change…
It’s the specter that haunts us all, isn’t it? Everyone in the Pacific Northwest, whether they have even a passing knowledge of baseball or not, knows at least one thing about the Seattle Mariners: they come into every year with a whole ton of hype and miss out on the playoffs by a hair.
2002. 2003. 2007. 2014. 2016. 2021. 2023. 2024.
2009 and 2018 would be, too, if you transported them into the modern MLB—but back then, you had to be an actually good team if you wanted to sniff the playoffs.
The extremely predictable, not-so-scenic route is this: The Mariners lose their playoff spot rather quickly, probably before they’re done with the current road trip. After that, they finally get a fire in their bellies and go on a winning streak, but there’s only one problem: the teams ahead of them are keeping perfect distance. The weeks go by, and they haven’t regained their spot; they’re one game out going into the final series of the year.
The Dodgers come to town and completely massacre Seattle in game one. It’s a crooked number and a half before the fifth inning, and a sellout crowd trickles down to three quarters full by the stretch. Luckily, the team they’re chasing also lost, so the M’s are still just one game out.
You’ve all seen this movie before. In truth, it doesn’t matter what the Mariners do next, because the team ahead of them wins their next two and eliminates Seattle in heartbreaking fashion. There might be late-inning heroics on Saturday to steal a close game from the Dodgers, but on Sunday—with the roof closed due to the return of the fall rains—the news comes as the Mariners are still on the field: Seattle has been eliminated.
Personal estimated likelihood: 45 percent
It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy that is probably weighing down on the guys like an anchor. It’s why I have the first scenario at 15 percent; there’s a good chance they drop out of the spot and just completely give up, since they’re all dreading a repeat of the last two years. But ultimately, I think this is the most likely scenario out of the four. They’re bound to get hot at some point, it will just be after they’ve taken destiny out of their own hands. Texas is just a half game back right now and could easily be one and a half games ahead if Seattle truly bottoms out in Atlanta.
It would be the most frustrating result of all, given that it would happen after the team went out and got the guys they were after. It wouldn’t be a season like 2023 or 2024 where the front office would have their own roster construction failures to blame; rather, it would be a season to raise the word cursed in the minds of the superstitious baseball fanatic.
Scenario III: Scraping In
In the third scenario, the Mariners actually make the dance, but they give themselves an uphill climb if they want to play a game at home. Here we might still see the M’s go back a half game in the near future, but after that, they get it together and keep the Rangers and Rays at arm’s length all the way to the end of the year. Playoffs are clinched sometime during the series against the Rockies in late September, but the Astros still come away with the AL West.
There would probably still be plenty of frustration to go around, though. The truth—oft-forgotten by a team who has made the playoffs just once in their last 23 seasons—is that only one team finishes the season truly happy. In this scenario, the M’s would go on the road to battle the Astros in the Wild Card round, which would probably end up as a two-game sweep by Houston. It would be an ignominious end, though not nearly as bad as missing out entirely.
If Seattle were to overcome their demons and best Houston in the playoffs, however, all bets would be off. They’d probably be playing the Blue Jays or Tigers in the Divisional round, both teams I think they can beat. A step further, and an ALCS against either the Tigers, Jays, Yankees, or Red Sox would be in the cards. While Toronto and Detroit would still be beatable, I really wouldn’t trust the M’s against New York or Boston.
Personal estimated likelihood: 35 percent
This is the second likeliest option of the four. Although the specter of collapse is large, the fact is that the Rangers, Rays, Royals, and Guardians really aren’t good teams, and it wouldn’t take a whole lot for the Mariners to hold them off. Whether they are up to the task mentally is a different story, but they definitely have the physical abilities to do so. The giant late-season rut would still give the Mariners a whole lot of cause for concern, but since they would have stared into the abyss and won, this scenario would also contain a fair bit of hope.
Scenario IV: AL West Champs
Here it is: the best they can reasonably do. Their recent skid has taken them out of the contest for top seeding, but with Houston also falling to bits, the AL West is still up for grabs. In this scenario, their run would begin immediately, with at least one win in the current series followed by a bunch more in mid-September to get them into a dead heat with Houston. The exact path doesn’t really matter, since the whole point of the scenario is that they finish the season in first place in the West.
The funny thing is that they would immediately face Houston in the playoffs. Unlike in the previous scenario, however, the series would be at home. Both teams would be desperate to prove themselves: for Seattle, to finally overcome their rival, and for Houston, to prove they’re still top dogs when it matters. Should Seattle come out ahead in that showdown, the rest of the playoff landscape would look essentially the same as the third scenario—but the M’s would have much better odds of getting there.
Personal estimated likelihood: five percent
I really don’t expect the Mariners to catch the Astros. Houston, like Seattle, is in one heck of a rut, but with the return of Yordan Alvarez, they’re bound to get back into form. Even discounting that, the Mariners first have to make sure they make the playoffs at all. But there’s always a possibility; as Yogi Berra said, it ain’t over ‘til it’s over.
