Seattle Mariners 2023 Season Preview
One of baseball’s best stories was written in the Pacific Northwest last season. The Seattle Mariners ended a 20-year playoff drought in epic fashion on Cal Raleigh’s pinch-hit walk-off home run on Sept. 30. Just to make it a little sweeter, they went on the road in the Wild Card Round against the Blue Jays and won the best-of-three series in two games, erasing a seven-run deficit in the process for the decisive Game 2 victory.
The storybook didn’t happen, as the Mariners lost a devastating 1-0 decision in 18 innings to get swept by the Astros in the ALDS, but the team got over a huge hump and the roster looks even better for 2023. The ALDS also could’ve gone very differently. Scott Servais inexplicably went to Robbie Ray in the ninth inning of Game 1 and Yordan Alvarez hit a ball that broke the sound barrier for a walk-off three-run homer. Game 3 could’ve fallen any number of ways. They were right there against the eventual World Series champs, a team they finished 16 games behind in the division.
Being “right there” has mostly evaded the Mariners. They’ve won 90 games in back-to-back seasons for the first time since 2002-03 and this is the first time they’ve had consecutive winning seasons since then. Jerry Dipoto’s seemingly endless games of musical chairs finally brought the right combination to Seattle and last season may have been just the beginning.