This story was excerpted from Daniel Kramer¡¯s Mariners Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
SEATTLE -- For the first time over the Opening Week of the regular season, the Mariners exercised a formula to victory that this roster was built for in Wednesday¡¯s 3-2 win over the Tigers.
- Get a quality start from their starter
- Give him just enough run support
- Let the leverage arms bridge that late lead to the finish
It sounds wildly simple, but for a team built on starting pitching and a bullpen that¡¯s getting healthier, if their offense can muster just enough run production -- and more so, consistently -- they don¡¯t need an all-world lineup to take the next step back to October for the first time in three years.
Agree with the logic or not, that¡¯s how Seattle¡¯s front office constructed the 2025 roster based on the offseason resources afforded to them.
¡°We talked about it in Spring Training a lot, that we're going to be in a lot of one-run games,¡± Mariners manager Dan Wilson said. ¡°That's just how it goes.¡±
The challenge with this formula is that just about everything has to go right -- which it did on Wednesday, but not without a tense bases-loaded jam that Andr¨¦s Mu?oz worked out of.
On most nights, Seattle¡¯s starters should keep the club in the ballgame, having ranked third in MLB with a combined 178 quality starts from 2023-24. Yet the Mariners¡¯ record in those games was 132-46 for a winning percentage of .742, ranked 19th.
If they¡¯re going to reach the postseason, that percentage must climb.
¡°We're going to win the games in the late innings because that's just how our team is built,¡± Wilson said. ¡°And so when we have these kinds of games, and they're within our grasp, it's important to execute and take them."
Most of the Mariners¡¯ losses in quality starts could be correlated to a lack of run support and/or hiccups from their bullpen. Seattle was 27-28 in one-run games last season after leading MLB in one-run victories in 2022 and ¡®23.
The club also struggled to put games away, going 9-10 when tied after the sixth inning, 7-13 when tied after the seventh, 10-10 when tied after the eighth and 9-8 in extra innings. They also went 62-31 when scoring first and 22-46 when the opponent scored first.
¡°We go in with the mentality that we have to score early,¡± said right fielder Victor Robles, who ripped a key two-run double off Tigers starter Tarik Skubal. ¡°With all the starters that we have, we know that if we can take advantage of that early, we¡¯ve got [the pitching] that can carry us the rest of the game.¡±
It¡¯s far too soon to make wholesale judgments on the 2025 lineup, though the fact that it¡¯s mostly the same faces from a year ago lends a little more credence to an early assessment.
The bright spots have been Randy Arozarena scorching the ball, Julio Rodr¨ªguez carrying a team-best .379 on-base percentage (up from .325 last year) and Jorge Polanco (6-for-15 with a game-winning homer on Opening Day) showing signs of a rebound. The bullpen should soon inject power arms Matt Brash and Troy Taylor via returns from the injured list.
But there are still tendencies from last year¡¯s struggles that have surfaced and need to be sorted, such as the lineup¡¯s 27.5% strikeout rate (tied for sixth-worst and up from 26.8%) and a .111 batting average with runners in scoring position (last in MLB).
Creating traffic and cashing in, especially early in games, also correlates to far more confidence for a starter, who then isn¡¯t forced to pitch on a tightrope.
That the Mariners came away 3-4 on their opening homestand despite quite a few flawed games was a positive. They know that they¡¯re going to play in closer games than most teams -- it¡¯s just how they¡¯re built -- but how often they reach the finish line as they did Wednesday will determine the totality of their success, or lack thereof, in 2025.