One of the most fun aspects of this upcoming MLB postseason is the abundance of potential likable underdogs. There are the Brewers, a team who has never won a World Series but has the best record in the Majors this year. There are the Padres, another title-less team with a fanbase that has become one of the most raucous and inspirational in the sport. The Reds, the Blue Jays, the Guardians, the Tigers, heck, even the Mets (it has been nearly 40 years since a title, after all!), you can make cases for all of them as an ideal playoff rooting interest for the otherwise unaffiliated.
But I wonder if the strongest case of them all can be made for the one team remaining in all of baseball that has never, not even once, reached a World Series … but may just have their best opportunity in more than two decades to do just that. I wonder if maybe we should all get behind the Seattle Mariners.
Every once in a while, a team has The Year, the one that feels special, fated -- almost ordained. I wonder if it might be the Mariners’ turn. Here are five reasons it all seems to be coming together for the Mariners in 2025 … why this year might just be The Year.
1. They have the comeback narrative.
The Houston Astros, rather famously, have won the American League West every single full season since 2017, but they looked mighty vulnerable early when they lost big chunks of their rotation and their best hitter, Yordan Alvarez. But the Mariners -- not to mention the rest of the division -- were unable to take advantage. Houston led this division almost the entire year, and Seattle was as many as seven games back as recently as July 10.
You did have to kind of wonder: If the Mariners weren’t going to win the division this year, when would they? But since then, they’ve been 41-24, catching up with the Astros and, over the weekend, finally passing them before putting the division away on Wednesday night. (Remember: 2001 was the last time Seattle won this division. 2001!) It looked for a while like the Mariners had blown their chance. They did not, it turns out, blow their chance.
2. They’re having an all-time memorable individual season … and it’s not from the person we all thought it would be from.
Since he made his debut at the beginning of the 2022 season, people have been waiting for Julio Rodríguez to have his MVP season, and many (including The Athletic’s Keith Law and, well, the person writing the piece you’re reading right now) even picked him to win the MVP. And there’s no question: Julio has had an outstanding year, upping his numbers across the board from a disappointing 2024 to tying for seventh in the AL in FanGraphs WAR (5.5). (He has been particularly excellent since the All-Star break, putting up a .901 OPS.)
But when you look back at the 2025 Mariners season, no offense to Julio, but he’s not the player you will remember. Before this season, Cal Raleigh was thought of as one of the better-hitting (and fielding, for that matter) catchers in baseball but not someone who was going to go out and set records. But that is of course exactly what he has done, setting the all-time single-season home run mark for both catchers and switch-hitters and leading the American League in both homers and RBIs. He clobbered his 59th and 60th homers on Wednesday -- tying the record for most multi-HR games in a single season with his 11th. He’s an extremely likable player -- with an irresistible nickname -- having an all-timer of a season. You get years like this once in a lifetime. Raleigh’s having his at the exact right moment to carry his team to its first division title in 24 years. Maybe you think he’s the MVP and maybe you don’t. But this year has belonged to the Big Dumper.
3. They’re peaking at just the right time.
The Mariners are closing magnificently, going 16-5 in September, leading them to not only the AL West title but almost certainly a first-round bye. But it’s not just that they’re hot. It sure looks like they’re rounding into the team that we were all excited about in the first place. The rotation, assuming Bryan Woo’s minor inflammation in his pectoral muscle turns out all right, is rolling right now, with both Luis Castillo and George Kirby coming around in September. The lineup is more stacked than it has been in many, many years, and that’s even with Eugenio Suárez still not quite getting it going since the Trade Deadline. (You know he’s got a big homer coming at some point this October, no question.) Heck, even the bullpen, which has been a question mark at points this year, has been excellent of late; as my colleague Mike Petriello pointed out, the best part is that most of that improvement has come internally. This is a team that is firing on all cylinders at the precise moment you want to be firing on all cylinders.
4. Who else in the American League scares you?
The hottest team in baseball for the last month-plus has been the Yankees, a team Mariners fans, fair to say, would prefer not to see this October, considering what happened the last time they faced off in the playoffs. But New York might not even win its division, which means the team may have to win a Wild Card Series just to have the opportunity to reach the AL Division Series, and the way the seeding is playing out, any Yankees-Mariners series probably wouldn’t happen until the AL Championship Series anyway.
Otherwise? Whoever wins the AL Central already looks diminished. The Blue Jays haven’t won a playoff game in nearly a decade. The Red Sox are missing a bunch of their young stars. And none of those teams have the rotation of the Mariners anyway. Go ahead and stack Seattle up against every team it might face in the ALDS. The Mariners are the clear favorite each time, right? And they may end up with home-field advantage in every series … in front of a crowd that’s going to be losing its mind every night.
5. They even have a slogan … from Ichiro, no less!
On the day that Raleigh tied Johnny Bench for homers by a primary catcher with 45, Ichiro Suzuki -- the year he was inducted into the Hall of Fame, the weekend his number was retired by the Mariners -- had a simple message as he addressed the Mariners dugout: “Seize the moment.” That phrase has become a rallying cry for this team and their fans: You can get it on T-shirts, you’ll find it on every team hashtag, and it’s even on a banner in the outfield now. You can already imagine the season highlight videos Mariners fans will all get for the holidays: “Seize The Moment: The Story of the 2025 World Series Seattle Mariners.” It’s a special season. Players know it, fans know it, Ichiro knows it. It may be time for the rest of us to know it.