After a Series of Near Misses, the Mariners Vow to Be Back
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“I feel like this is just the beginning for all of us,” Julio Rodríguez said after the Mariners made the playoffs for the first time since 2001 but were swept by Houston.
By Tyler Kepner
Oct. 16, 2022
Updated 11:45 a.m. ET
SEATTLE — This was baseball in the future perfect tense: Julio Rodríguez, the youngest and the best player on the Seattle Mariners, coming to the plate to save the season. It had to be Rodríguez, didn’t it? The phenom would propel them.
One game before, in Houston, Rodríguez had come to bat in the same situation — one out to spare — and ripped a double. The Astros won, anyway, but that was in a conventional game. This was twice as excruciating: bottom of the 18th inning and still no runs for the home team.
Ten innings earlier, Rodríguez had smashed the hardest hit of the day, a 112 mile-an-hour laser off the left-field wall for a double. Even Jeremy Peña’s home run on Saturday, off Penn Murfee in the top of the 18th, was not quite as forceful.
But it was more effective, and Rodríguez could not match it, punching a harmless flyout to center off Luis Garcia, ending the game, 1-0, and sending the Astros to their sixth consecutive American League Championship Series.
Peña — who had two-out hits before both of Yordan Alvarez’s homers in Houston — has rewarded the Astros’ faith in giving him the shortstop job after letting Carlos Correa leave as a free agent.
“Boy, he’s been a godsend to us, especially since we lost Carlos, because this could have been a disastrous situation had he not performed the way he has,” Astros Manager Dusty Baker said. “And he’s only getting better.”
The Mariners believe they are, too. Their 20-season playoff absence had been the longest active streak in baseball, and they have no plans to start a new one.
“I feel like this is just the beginning for all of us,” said Rodríguez, 21, who held his bat all the way to the bench after the final out. “We’re definitely going to keep on going and we’re going to be back.”
The fans here had waited so long to host the playoffs that, for a while, it seemed the baseball gods had granted them a game that would never end. It was the first postseason game ever to be scoreless through 17 innings, and the Mariners had set a franchise record for strikeouts in a game, with 22.
Rodríguez whiffed three times, but also had the Mariners’ only extra-base hit and stolen base. The last three hitters in their lineup were 1 for 21 with no walks. The afternoon shadows did not help, and neither did the fans holding shoes on their heads for good luck (yes, it’s a thing here).
Nothing worked for the Mariners: not the navy-and-teal towels waving across T-Mobile Park; not a first pitch from their former ace, Félix Hernández; not Macklemore exhorting the fans from a luxury suite; not Mike McCready of Pearl Jam performing the national anthem on electric guitar.
“As a Mariners fan, you can’t get into that scenario of, ‘Well, we’ll wait till next year and see how it goes,’” said McCready, after his morning soundcheck. “You get into that, and it’s defeatist psychology. I feel like this is going to be a great game. I’m nervous and I couldn’t sleep last night — but I’m excited, and I can’t wait. It’s big for us, you know? It’s a big deal. We’ve had the Seahawks win the Super Bowl, the Sonics in ’79. So you’re always hoping.”
The Mariners remain the only team in the majors that has never reached the World Series. In some ways they came close to an upset in this division series — as San Diego and Philadelphia pulled off in the National League — but two Alvarez homers made the difference in Houston, and the Astros’ pitchers took over in Seattle
“We were right there,” Mariners reliever Paul Sewald said. “And you could tell on their faces that they were a little bit shocked that we were ready to play against them. We had not played well against them. We got Yordan’d the first two days, and we got shadowed and their pitchers did a great job tonight. We’re millimeters from winning that series, 3-0.”
Sewald acknowledged that he could have pitched better in Game 1, when he put two runners on base in the ninth before Robbie Ray allowed Alvarez’s game-winning blast. The Mariners did win a two-game playoff series in Toronto, but earned just one game at home.
“It’s a lot better to play at home than it is to play on the road constantly, so I think we’ll remember that, we’ll remember this crowd,” Sewald said. “And we’ll remember that in the middle of June, when things were not looking good, we still ended up here.”
The Mariners were 29-39 through June 19, but went 61-33 thereafter. Along the way they traded for and signed a top starter, Luis Castillo; signed Rodríguez through at least the end of this decade (and possibly much longer); and watched three more homegrown players — starters Logan Gilbert and George Kirby and catcher Cal Raleigh — become high-impact contributors.
Jerry Dipoto, the Mariners’ president of baseball operations, went from locker to locker after the game, sharing more smiles than sadness with the team. The players, Dipoto said, went as far as they could against a rival that sets the standard.
“They’re the best team in our league,” Dipoto said of the Astros. “I think we’re a young team that stood up and showed people that we’re for real. It wasn’t just a gimmick. We have good, young players, we have a ton of talent, and our young guys showed up.”
He added: “They probably need some time just to rest and realize what they did. They overcame a lot. They broke a couple-of-decade drought. They engaged a city in baseball that really hasn’t been engaged in this way in a long time.”
The fans stayed engaged, even after the end. When the Mariners lost to Cleveland in the 1995 A.L.C.S., the fans roared in the Kingdome, reluctant to leave before a final salute to the first playoff team in franchise history. On Saturday, they reprised the act for a minute or two, standing and chanting, “Let’s go Mariners!”, while the Astros celebrated below.
Some of the players had left for the clubhouse by then, but third baseman Eugenio Suárez, who led the Mariners in homers in his first season here, climbed from the dugout to return the gesture.
“I never thought that was going to happen, but I’ve got that on my mind for the rest of my career, for the rest of my life,” Suárez said. “They cheered us from the beginning of the season, and today they never left the stands. I just wanted to give a little bit of my heart to them, because they really deserve it.”
The Mariners could not give their fans another playoff game, or even a single run on Saturday. But they gave them something to savor: a new beginning.
“Today our season ended,” Suárez said. “But we’re going home proud.”
Tyler Kepner has been national baseball writer since 2010. He joined The Times in 2000 and covered the Mets for two seasons, then covered the Yankees from 2002 to 2009. @TylerKepner
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