SEATTLE -- Cal Raleigh said that, even after playing in all but three regular-season games while logging 1,072 innings behind the plate and accumulating 705 plate appearances, he intended to utilize only Monday as a true off-day during the Mariners’ first-round bye leading up to the American League Division Series.
“To me, motion is lotion,” Raleigh said. “Staying in that routine, staying moving, staying strong, making sure you get your workouts in and doing everything you need to do, trying to stay as crisp as possible.”
Raleigh and the AL West champion Mariners will play scrimmages on Wednesday and Thursday at T-Mobile Park -- which will be open to fans -- in an effort to balance rest vs. rust, as they await their opponent.
Seattle will open the ALDS on Saturday at home against the winner of the best-of-three Wild Card Series pitting the Tigers vs. the Guardians. And beyond the layoff for a team that went 17-8 in September, there’s also the reality that whoever the Mariners face will be coming in with elevated confidence having just won a postseason series.
“The idea is to keep our edge as best we can,” Mariners manager Dan Wilson said. “I don't think there's an exact science to it, but we'll do the best we can to keep everybody ready.”
Here’s a look at how the Mariners stack up against both Cleveland and Detroit:
The momentum factor
If Cleveland advances, it will be another emphatic milestone to its regular-season finish. The Guardians were even better than the Mariners in September, going an MLB-best 20-7 and overcoming a deficit from first place as large as 11 games as late as Sept. 4.
Seattle’s most recent matchup against either of these teams was from Aug. 29-31, in Cleveland, and a series that sparked the Guardians’ resurgence, as they entered that weekend .500 then went on to take two of three -- including a gut-punch Mariners loss in the opener.
That weekend is far more reflective of who the Guardians are now than their first series vs. the Mariners at T-Mobile Park from June 13-15, a Seattle sweep in which the Mariners outscored them, 17-5.
The Guardians (88-74) only won the division thanks to the Tigers' tailspin, which included a 1-5 head-to-head stretch in late September that nearly cost Detroit (87-75) a playoff spot altogether.
A case could be made that a true turning point for the Tigers was their most recent matchup vs. the Mariners, who were coming off their worst loss of the season yet went into Comerica Park for a three-game sweep leading into the All-Star break. The Tigers had MLB’s best record at the time, but finished 28-40, tied for the sport’s sixth-worst record since. That weekend was also the turning point for Julio Rodríguez, who led all AL players with 3.8 Wins Above Replacement, per FanGraphs, the rest of the way.
Their first meeting was just the second series of the regular season for each team, from March 31 through April 2, when the Mariners were nearly swept before eking out a 3-2 win vs. Tarik Skubal in the finale.
The style-of-play factor
Regardless of who advances, the Mariners will likely be favored -- for home-field advantage but also talent-wise, they do have a more complete roster.
The Mariners ranked tied for second in wRC+ (119, where league average is 100), third in homers (238), seventh in hard-hit rate (33.5%) and 10th in slugging percentage (.740). Their rotation has also been on an upswing, with a 3.55 ERA in September that ranked fifth-best, while their bullpen’s 3.12 ERA in that stretch was sixth-best.
“In the postseason ... you're facing the best pitchers in baseball, and it's hard to string together the number of hits required to put up crooked numbers,” Mariners president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto said. “Crooked numbers happen when you hit it out of the ballpark.”
Offensively, the Tigers (who ranked 11th in slugging) are more comparable than the Guardians (29th). Detroit has far more boom-or-bust (with a 23.9% strikeout rate that was the sport’s fourth-highest), while Cleveland was 15th-worst, at 22.6%.
The Guardians don’t scorch the ball (20th in homers, 29th in hard-hit rate), but they do pitch well, ranking fourth in ERA (3.70) and seventh in OPS against (.694).
That said, the Tigers have the sport’s best pitcher in Skubal, the frontrunner to win his second straight AL Cy Young Award. If they advanced, the Mariners would have to face him twice in the ALDS, though they did beat him in both regular-season matchups (5.91 ERA, .848 OPS).
The manager factor
Regardless of who they face, Wilson is going to have his work cut out for him going up against Detroit’s A.J. Hinch -- widely regarded as one of the sport’s most tactical managers -- and Cleveland’s Stephen Vogt, who after a one-year stint as Seattle’s bullpen coach in 2023 went on to win the 2024 AL Manager of the Year in his first season with the Guardians.
Wilson’s best attribute since taking over last Aug. 22 has been his even-keeled nature that’s fostered an environment for players to feel loose. But he’s also been susceptible to the game speeding up on him -- and it won’t be at a faster and more pressure-packed pace than in the postseason.