Another year has gone by with the Seattle Mariners outside of the World Series. This time around, Mariners fans and players were left a little more heartbroken than before.
The 2025 Seattle Mariners were bound for a deep playoff push, but it didn’t look like it from the jump. At the beginning of the season, Manager Dan Wilson’s team was predicted to be a fringe playoff team with no expectation of becoming a threat down the line, barring any major trades.
It took the team a while to get the ball rolling, mainly because Cal Raleigh hadn’t established himself as one of the league’s most dangerous hitters until a couple of months into the season. Seattle still showed flashes, especially from their pitching that slowly became one of the league’s most feared starting rotations by year’s end.
Midway through the season, it was clear that the team had something brewing. Raleigh shocked the world, bursting onto the scene and crushing home runs like they were nothing. Though not a slouch in previous seasons, Raleigh was seen as a solid defensive catcher who could mash balls on a semi-consistent basis. It wasn’t until this year that his home run totals jumped to the moon, almost doubling his previous career high (34), to reach a league high with 60 home runs by the end of the regular season. Raleigh’s leap earned him an all-star nod, but more importantly, he became the superstar player the Mariners front office needed to build around.
As the trade deadline was drawing near, the Mariners front office had one goal in mind: to win. Raleigh was swinging the bat like it was nobody’s business, Julio Rodriguez was putting together a solid season of his own and suddenly the team had one of the best bullpens in baseball. When July 24 hit, the first major move for the Mariners was complete — Mississauga native Josh Naylor was acquired in a trade from the Arizona Diamondbacks, in exchange for Brandyn Garcia and Ashton Izzi. At the time, this was seen as a huge step in the right direction for the Mariners, securing a middle-of-the-lineup player who had power and some experience in big moments.
The Mariners weren’t done just yet, as they would stay in Arizona, acquiring third baseman Eugenio Suárez in exchange for Tyler Locklear (Mariners’ No. 9 prospect), Hunter Cranton and Juan Burgos. Suárez would return to the Mariners after just a few seasons away, aiming to return as another masher who could provide stability at the third base position. It was now or never.
As September rolled around, the Mariners found themselves sitting second in the American League West, trailing the Houston Astros, who were just weeks away from clinching a playoff berth.
In movie-like fashion, the Mariners went on a tear. Winning game after game, with some legendary moments like Cal Raleigh finishing the home run race in first place and the pitching staff cementing themselves as arguably the best in the American League. For the cherry on top, the Astros had fallen off a cliff and were now trailing the Mariners in the division. It looked like sunshine and rainbows in Seattle; they were now the sweethearts of baseball who everyone wanted to see win. But that’s exactly where things went wrong.
The team was crowned American League West champions by season’s end, eliminating their rival Astros from the playoffs entirely, and locking up a bye in the division series. Fast forward and they’d be taking on the Detroit Tigers, a team that had rallied to beat the Cleveland Guardians in the wild-card round after a treacherous end to the regular season.
After a back-and-forth five-game series that saw the Tigers’ superstar pitcher Tarik Skubal fighting for his life on the mound, the final game went to 15 innings.
It was now the ALCS, Seattle vs. Toronto, with almost all of America rooting for the Mariners. For context, the Mariners were (and still are) the only team to never make a World Series, a record that has been haunting the franchise and fans since their inception. To make things worse, every other major American sport has at least multiple franchises that haven’t made it to their respective championship finals, while the Mariners sit alone as the MLB’s only team to not make a World Series. The peak of this curse goes back to 2001 when the Mariners set the record for most regular season wins in the history of baseball with 116, before collapsing against the Yankees in the postseason. That being said, the Mariners had to have hope.
At that point, the only smart thing to do is to leave any negative discourse in the past and focus on the task at hand: beating the Blue Jays.
Things got off to a sensational start for Seattle, as they won the first two games of the series in Toronto, not to mention that they were able to roll out number five starter Bryce Miller in game one — who performed beyond expectation — pitching six innings, allowing only one earned run.
Heading back to Seattle, it felt all but secure for the Mariners, who were just two wins away from their first World Series in franchise history. Unfortunately for Mariners fans, history would repeat itself. The Blue Jays went into Seattle and picked up two massive wins, tying the series at two after a game three beatdown and a steady game four.
It wouldn’t be over just yet, as the Mariners would steal game five, leaving them just one win shy of the holy grail.
The sanity of Mariners fans was hanging in the balance of one final game. It looked as though they had it in the bag, up 3-1 in the seventh inning, as they brought in reliever Eduard Bazardo to face George Springer. One swing of the bat later and the rest was history.
The Mariners had fallen, yet again. 4-3 Blue Jays was the final, with another year gone without a World Series for Seattle. It was one of the most depressing post-game scenes you could witness in sports, with Mariners players in a combination of shock, silence and anger as the game ended.
Depending on who you ask, the internet was graced or damned with a clip that went viral of Julio Rodríguez’s scream filling the air in Bryan Woo’s post-game interview.
That clip encapsulates the Mariners’ end to their once-promising season — one filled with countless positive memories but ultimately tainted by a single George Springer home run.
If there are any positives to take away from this season as a Mariners fan, it’s that the team looks to continue to improve heading into 2026. Raleigh stamped himself as one of the league’s fiercest hitters. Rodriguez proved why he’s one of the most well-rounded players in the game. Finally, the pitching staff looks poised to be one of the best next year if things stay as they were in 2025.