WASHINGTON -- Mercifully, the Mariners’ longest road trip of the season has come to an end.
A team running on fumes looked the part in Sunday’s 10-1 loss to cap this three-city, 10-game weave through the East Coast -- capped in a finale that saw two more key contributors go down, as Josh Naylor and Andrés Muñoz each exited early.
X-rays came back negative on Naylor’s right shin and Muñoz is day to day with lower back tightness until they gather more information, manager Dan Wilson said.
Those developments will come in Seattle, where the Mariners can’t return soon enough. They went 4-6 on this road trip and fell back to one game above .500 (37-36).
“It was a long one in terms of just personnel, in terms of injuries, guys getting dinged up a little bit,” Wilson said. “That always makes it a little tricky. You lose your consistency a little bit in the lineup.”
As the 27th out was recorded on Sunday, the Mariners had five non-regulars on the lineup card:
• 1B Patrick Wisdom (who took over for Naylor)
• 3B Miles Mastrobuoni (a regular bench bat who’s started each of the past two games)
• CF Victor Robles (who’s typically in a platoon but played there to get Julio Rodríguez off his feet)
• C Jhonny Pereda (on the roster while Cal Raleigh recovers)
• RHP Nick Davila (who joined the team after two key relievers hit the IL earlier this week)
To be sure, these are key depth pieces that the club envisioned helping at some point in 2026 -- just not all at once. And it speaks to the state of the roster, which saw four regular players sidelined on this trip alone, not including Naylor and Muñoz.
“Those things are going to happen,” Wilson said. “Those stretches are going to happen from time to time, and just seem to hit us here on the road trip, and you know that's why it'll be good to get home.”
The good news is that reinforcements are on the way. J.P. Crawford and Cal Raleigh are expected to be activated, and Randy Arozarena appeared to avoid a significant left hamstring injury.
Arozarena has been Seattle’s most productive hitter, and Crawford -- despite defensive lapses that have frustrated the fanbase -- is having a huge year at the plate.
Raleigh, however, could be the big difference-maker, especially after a brutal start to the season that was compounded by the right oblique strain that he attempted to play through for two weeks before finally landing on the IL on May 14.
In that context, a realistic expectation would’ve been for the Mariners to just stay afloat. Yet despite taking some of their sloppier losses of the season on this trip, they’ve gone 16-13 without their all-world catcher, tied for MLB’s eighth-best record over this stretch. They’ve also held first place all alone since May 27.
It’s reasonable to expect more from a team that had played so inconsistently during the season’s first two months -- especially as many of those traits resurfaced over this three-city trip across Detroit, Baltimore and D.C.
It’s also prudent to look objectively at where the Mariners are at and where they could go once they return home, where they’ll be buoyed by a better version of their roster.