Alternate Title: The Mariners Couldn’t Sweep The Season Series Against The Orioles.
It’s funny how the last two months of losing makes it so we can’t even enjoy the times when the Mariners actually WIN a series. Yeah, we took 2/3 from the very-good Arizona Diamondbacks, but we dropped that finale! Yeah, we took 2/3 from the very-bad Baltimore Orioles, but we didn’t sweep their asses!
This is what it’s come to. We’re in the home stretch of this thing. One and a half more homestands, and one more long road trip and that’s it. 22 more games. 22 games to gain 5.5 on the Oakland Athletics for the second wild card spot, and we only play them three more times.
It’s asking a lot, is what I’m getting at. And losing ANY game from here on out just destroys our chances.
Somehow, in the next 15 games, the M’s need to pick up 2 games on the A’s. We need to break it down like this, because what’s going to have to happen that final week of the season is we’d need to sweep the A’s in that 3-game series, and then REALLY kick some fucking ass against the Rangers in the final 4.
So, let’s get into the weeds on this, because who gives a fuck about that Orioles series?
Over the next 15 games, the Mariners host the Yankees for 3, have a day off, then host the Padres for 2. We go to L.A. next week for 4 against the Angels, followed by 3 in Houston. We have an off-day on the 20th, then 3 more against the Rangers before returning home to face the A’s in that showdown.
The Yankees are obviously pretty great, and they just destroyed us over in the Bronx earlier this season (as well as in Seattle LAST season, when they arguably weren’t as good and we were arguably better than we are right now), but fuck it, the Mariners are just going to have to suck it up and find a way. That means the hitters need to fucking do their fucking jobs! We’ve got Paxton, followed by a rejuvinated Felix, followed by an Erasmo Ramirez who looks to have figured some things out over his last few starts. Need to find a way to win this series, and ideally sweep it.
Then, after plenty of rest, we have a 2-spot against the Padres. I don’t fucking care how it’s done, but this needs to be a sweep as well. NO MORE FUCKING AROUND, MARINERS!
The Angels must be in the area of giving up at this point, but I’m sure they’d love nothing more than to ruin our playoff chances. We need to stomp on their throats. Again, this is a series we MUST win, and also ideally a sweep. That takes us to Houston, which is another really good team, but we still need to find a way to win the series. And, I’m sorry, but if we can’t figure out a way to sweep a trash team like the Rangers, then we don’t fucking deserve to break this post-season curse.
In terms of numbers, you’d like the Mariners to go 13-2 in these games. That sounds like I’m asking too much, but desperate times call for desperate measures, and it’s not like this is an impossible task! It just requires guys to stop sucking and start doing their fucking jobs and playing like we’re accustomed to seeing them play! (of course, a cynic could say we HAVE been seeing them play like we’re accustomed to … Same Ol’ Mariners Losing Baseball).
The A’s also play 15 games between now and the time they come to Seattle (where that half-game comes into play is the A’s get an off-day between Seattle and their final series, down in L.A. against the Angels, which is just a 3-gamer; while we get no off-day and ours is a 4-gamer against the Rangers). So, any way we can get it, we just need to pick up 2 games on them before a miracle final week. If we go 8-7 in the next 15, they need to fall apart and go 6-9. I went with 13-2 because the A’s are really good and they’re not likely to fall apart; 11-4 seems like a reasonable figure for them.
The A’s host Texas this weekend, then they go to Baltimore to kick off a little mini-road trip on Tuesday. That’s unfortunate, as the A’s should be favored to win all 6 of those games; let’s hope they find a way to lose at least 1. It gets a little tougher when they go to Tampa to play the Rays, who have been on a real hot streak of late. We need the Rays to take 2 of those games at the very least.
Then, the A’s return home for 3 against the Angels and 3 against the Twins. Neither team is very good, but let’s hope the Angels have a little magic up their sleeves in one of those games to get the A’s that 4th loss.
If it goes according to plan – 13-2 for the M’s, 11-4 for the A’s – then we’ll be 91-64 and the A’s will be 95-61 when we meet on September 24th. At that point, the Mariners would HAVE to sweep, which would make us 94-64 and the A’s 95-64. From there, we’d control our own destiny: if we sweep the 4-game set against the Rangers, even if the A’s swept the Angels in their final three, we’d both be 98-64 and have a 1-game play-in game to get to the 1-game Wild Card game against the Yankees.
Of course, for this particular scenario to work, it would require the Mariners to go 20-2 down the stretch, which would PROBABLY be the most ridiculous thing we’ve ever seen in the history of Major League Baseball.
But, like I said before, it can be any combination of things. Break it down like this, for the TL;DR crowd:
- The Mariners need to pick up just 2 games over the Athletics over the next 15 games
- The M’s need to sweep the 3-game series against the A’s in the final week
- The M’s need to pick up the final half-game on the A’s over the final weekend (meaning the M’s need to win just 1 more game than the A’s in their respective final series; the M’s play 4, the A’s play 3, so it could be as simple as both teams sweeping)
It’s far from an ideal situation, but it’s managable. The Mariners just need to go out and fucking do it.