The Seattle Mariners Could Clinch a Playoff Spot Today

We needn’t get into who has the higher meals scene or the more severe site visitors between Portland and our rivals to the north; we’re simply going to confess there are some big-city charms Seattle has that Portland doesn’t. There’s an energetic public waterfront, an architecturally magnificent downtown library that is not at the moment closed for 3 months, a bustling Worldwide District near downtown with an Uwajimaya and a Daiso, a WNBA crew, a brand new NHL crew that is a advertising success story, and never only a Main League Baseball crew however a Main League Baseball crew whose postseason drought—the longest present postseason drought in any main league sport, at 21 years—may finish in a matter of hours.

Based on quite a few crucial and scientific surveys of, um, Fb followers or one thing, Portland is firmly in Mariners territory. They’re our house crew. Even if you’re a Portlander who detests the very thought of Seattle or are tied up in Cascadia soccer rivalries or Prime Pot vs. Blue Star doughnut showdowns, and even in the event you discover MLB and its management to be an previous boys’ community of unhealthy determination makers, even when the minor league Hillsboro Hops and novice Portland Pickles are the one baseball groups (and Barley T. Hop and Dillon T. Pickle the one mascots) you’ll ever want, it’s OK to set that apart and let the hope course via you.

Even earlier than the season began, you would argue the Seattle Mariners’ postseason probabilities had been higher than ever—they had been higher for each crew, since amongst this 12 months’s MLB adjustments is a brand new postseason format with 12 groups, up from 10, amongst  the 30 MLB groups complete. Six groups every within the American and Nationwide Leagues will proceed play: the three division winners in every league, after which the three groups with the most effective information among the many non-division winners, referred to as the wild playing cards. 

With six video games left, the Mariners are holding a wild card spot. In the event that they lose all of their final seven video games and the Baltimore Orioles win all six of their remaining video games earlier than the common MLB season ends on October 5, the Orioles will overtake the M’s. But when the Mariners win even one recreation (similar to their house recreation tonight at T-Cellular Park in opposition to the Oakland A’s, who’ve the worst report within the American League, at 6:40 p.m. on Root Sports activities Northwest), or if the Orioles lose even one recreation (similar to their away recreation at Yankee Stadium in the present day at 4:05 Pacific time, in opposition to the highest crew within the AL East), the Mariners clinch.

In the event that they find yourself within the sixth spot, they will face Cleveland first within the playoffs—the identical crew they beat within the AL Division Sequence of their final playoff look, in 2001, earlier than falling to the Yankees within the AL Championship Sequence. In the event that they find yourself forward of the opposite two wild playing cards (at the moment Toronto and Tampa Bay), they get to host the collection that begins the playoffs. (There is not any approach for them to have house area benefit in the event that they make it farther than that, however the AL Division and Championship Sequence, to not point out the World Sequence, at the least go to each groups’ parks, whereas the preliminary wild card spherical is a brief best-of-three collection all on the increased seed’s house stadium.)

Until the Yankees and Orioles go deep into further innings, their recreation in the present day ought to finish shortly after the Mariners-Athletic recreation begins. If the Orioles lose, count on a scene within the Mariners’ ballpark akin to that second in Ted Lasso when followers within the stands study the outcomes of one other recreation that adjustments all the things for the sport they’re watching. For the Mariners, an Orioles loss shall be sufficient for an early-inning occasion to interrupt out at T-Cellular, in the entire metropolis of Seattle, and in all of Mariners nation, Portland included.