The Mariners are in second place

The odds are not long, but they are getting longer

If the season ended today, the Mariners would not make the playoffs.

The Mariners started 22-14, rattling off nine consecutive series wins. They are now 33-34, four games behind the Astros in the West and 2 1/2 games out of the wild card. How much have their playoff odds changed? Well, not much since the beginning of the season, but quite a bit since I wrote my Post-Early Report in May. Fangraphs still gives the Mariners top six playoff odds in the American League, with about one-in-two odds to make the playoffs and one-in-four odds to win the division.

Playoff odds can be a bit controversial. What they mean is not always clear. The Mariners in 2022 had playoff odds as low as 5.1% before making the playoffs. In 2018 and 2024, they had odds as high as 88.3% and 91.7% before missing the playoffs. Their odds a month ago were nearly twice as high as their odds today. And their odds today are nine times higher than the Angels, who have the same record.

The “odds” in playoff odds are almost beside the point. The number helps summarize several leading indicators, which can be useful when trying to think rationally about a team’s outlook. The “odds” are simply a reference, an illustration, a hedge. The Mariners current 50% playoff odds (or thereabouts) mean if the rest of the season were played 20,000 times, we should find the Mariners in October in about 10,000 of them. The range of outcomes includes 95-win seasons and 65-win seasons, but the most likely scenario is something more familiar — something “in the mix.” Let’s walk through the three main assumptions Fangraphs uses to get to these numbers: 1) standings to date; 2) projected player performance through the end of the season; and 3) remaining schedule. There’s good and bad news for the Mariners in each.

Standings to date

The Mariners haven’t played their way out of contention... yet.

Seasons are long. Seasons are difficult. Sometimes good teams play well; sometimes they play poorly. I found the win rate over every 30-game stretch for every team for every season since 2000. I separated each season into buckets of “goodness” by final record. The median “best” stretch for an 86- to 90-win team was 20-10; the median “worst” stretch was 11-19. The Mariners happened to hit both consecutively in the span of 60 days. To illustrate the shape of a typical playoff-caliber season, I selected a few examples of teams that hit both the median high and the median low. This is what their seasons looked like:

In other words, the Mariners performance in April was indeed notable. It’s not the only good stretch they’ll need this year, but it looks like the foundation of a true contender. The plot also shows their recent slide hasn’t pushed them past the point of no return. If this is the worst they play all season, that would be an “average” cold stretch for a good team. Fangraphs projected the Mariners to win 86 games from the outset, and that result is still on the table 2 1/2 months later. But sometimes downward trends continue. The ongoing skid wouldn’t look out of place in a 70-win season, either. The Mariners have used up their slump for the year. They need to turn things around soon.

Projected performance

The projections think they will turn it around, but maybe not enough.

Fangraphs’ playoff odds rely on “Rest of Season” player projections from ZiPS and Steamer. ZiPS continues to think the Mariners are very good, while Steamer continues to think they’re closer to average. Fangraphs uses a 50/50 split between the two, and the following table reflects that:

The Mariners through 67 games are about average. The combined wisdom of ZiPS and Steamer suggests, going forward, they’ll be a top 10 team and rough equivalents to the Astros. The top of the Mariners roster looks competitive by both actual and projected WAR. Both systems think Cal Raleigh is overperforming (the only player expected to decline more this season is Aaron Judge), but both agree Raleigh is among the best in the game. The projections still love Julio, even if the highlight of his season so far is cementing his status as an inner-circle, all-time Mariners defensive centerfielder. J.P. Crawford and Randy Arozarena make up a solid 2a and 3a, and the Mariners rotation remains good and deep (when healthy). We can see how they compare to the Astros by actual and projected WAR:

While the Mariners look competitive at the top, this plot also shows they’ve had the seven worst players between the clubs to date (the eighth is Yordan Alvarez). Leody Taveras, Trent Thornton, Donovan Solano and Rowdy Tellez have posted a combined -3 fWAR. The Mariners would be a top 10 team with replacement level production from those spots.

ZiPS and Steamer are bullish because they assume the Mariners will eliminate those holes going forward, either through improvement or replacement. The Mariners are projected to add more fWAR than any other contender from now through the end of the season; their current year-end pace is expected to improve by about 5 fWAR. That may even understate their potential gains. The return of George Kirby and Logan Gilbert could add length to the rotation, reducing the workload on an overexposed bullpen. A healthy Luke Raley could patch holes at multiple positions, allowing others to return to their intended role. And the Mariners could add value from outside the org at the trade deadline.

But even with those (projected) improvements, the Mariners would still finish the season outside the top 10 by fWAR and well behind the Astros. It’s possible the Astros will suffer a similar skid at some point — in fact, they should, if you believe the analysis in the section above — but the Mariners look like a team fighting for a wild card spot and not the division, assuming they’re still fighting for anything at all. They need help.

Remaining schedule

The schedule doesn’t exactly favor the Mariners, either.

As John Trupin noted on the site on Wednesday, the Astros have the weakest schedule remaining, while the Mariners schedule looks a bit more normal. To illustrate this, I assigned each team a “strength coefficient” based on their WAR per game to date. Here’s the distribution of their upcoming opponents:

I normally don’t put too much stock in strength of schedule, but the timing is not ideal. The Mariners are about to begin their toughest stretch of the season as they attempt to (and must) climb out of a free fall. That said, if they can survive around .500 for the next few weeks, they’ll come out of the All-Star Break with a bit more health, a bit more depth, and a mostly favorable schedule ahead. There’s still time for a mid-summer run, but as Trupin wrote yesterday, “The way they’re playing right now, they could lose to anybody.”

That’s (roughly) how Fangraphs gets to 50%. The Mariners haven’t bottomed out, they’re still projected to be good, and most of the season is in front of them. I hope there’s enough “this is bad” and “this is baseball” in the words above to offer a sense for where things stand. I won’t tell you how to feel about the Mariners, as I don’t know how to feel about them myself. It’s hard to think rationally about a team that just lost most of its games in a month. I will say, however, this is kind of the Mariners thing. This is the gamble they willingly accept and the one they say they can win. If there’s anything this organization has proven capable of, it’s getting to the end of the season “in the mix.”