Copyright Heavy.
Close, but not close enough. The Seattle Mariners’ 2025 season ended the same way that too many of their seasons have – potential, but pain, and another abrupt end that came up short. The Mariners’ 4-3 loss last night to the Toronto Blue Jays in Game Seven of the American League Championship Series was painful enough just as a result. It was doubly painful considering the way in which it happened – the George Springer home run will sting for a while. Almost as bad as losing Game Five to the New York Yankees back in 2001, if not worse. Yet to add insult to injury, the loss also extended one of Major League Baseball’s strangest and longest-running distinctions. With the loss, the Mariners ensured they would remain as the only active MLB franchise never to appear in a World Series. Another Painful Mariners Loss This year’s run was supposed to be the one that finally ended 49 years of futility. The Mariners won 95 games in the regular season, powered by elite pitching and a core of young players headlined by an MVP-calibre season by All-Star catcher, Cal Raleigh. Instead, this season will go down as little more than yet another punch to the dumper. The Mariners’ franchise began in 1977, and in nearly half a century, their fans have experienced both the extremes of irrelevance and fleeting stretches of excellence. The team’s most successful years came in the mid-1990s and early 2000s, a period that featured all-time greats such as Ken Griffey Jr., Randy Johnson, Edgar Martínez and recent Hall-of-Fame inductee Ichiro Suzuki. In particular, the 1995 team, remembered for Griffey’s slide home in the Division Series against the Yankees, saved baseball in Seattle and proved the city could host a contender; the 2001 team meanwhile won 116 games, tying the MLB record. But neither they, nor Raleigh’s 2025 club, has ever made it to the Fall Classic. Since the 116-win days, the Mariners have cycled through rebuilds and retools, with little to no success to show for it until this year. They endured the then-longest playoff drought across all of the big four North American professional sports, from 2001 until 2022. Yet the 2025 team that was supposed to be the culmination of all that development came within one swing of Springer’s bat from finishing the job. Seattle’s inability to reach the World Series is now unique across Major League Baseball. Every other active team – even expansion franchises that arrived decades later, such as the Arizona Diamondbacks, Miami Marlins and Tampa Bay Rays – has at least appeared in one. Several clubs, including the Washington Nationals and Texas Rangers, finally broke through in recent years, leaving Seattle isolated as the only team still waiting. Even the Colorado Rockies managed one. Even. The. Rockies. This season, at least, offered genuine reasons for optimism. Rodríguez produced another All-Star year, hitting .291 with 32 home runs and 36 stolen bases. George Kirby and Logan Gilbert anchored a rotation that ranked among the top three in the league in ERA, Julio Rodriguez had an All-Star season in the outfield, while the bullpen led by Andrés Muñoz stabilized after early struggles. The Mariners’ run differential and defensive metrics both ranked near the top of the American League – by every statistical measure, this was one of the most balanced rosters the franchise has fielded in two decades. But once again, they came up short in the crunch; in the ALCS, the offense hit for just a .205 average, and the Mariners scored just eight runs across the final four games. The Mariners organization now faces a familiar offseason question: how to take the next step from “contender” to “champion.” The improvements in the last three seasons have shown in a positive light how the team has been built on a sustainable model, relying on player development and selective aggression in the trade market rather than large free-agent signings. Yet Seattle’s payroll ranks only in the middle of the league, and its margin for error against teams like the Yankees or the Los Angeles Dodgers remains small. Mariners fans have grown accustomed to waiting, and to heartbreak, but the tone around this latest exit feels different. The Mariners are no longer a rebuilding project or a pleasant surprise – they are a legitimate power that has simply not crossed the final threshold. For 48 seasons and counting, for a franchise that has seen Griffey, Ichiro, Hernández and now Raleigh all come and go without reaching October’s final stage, the drought has become both a statistic and a symbol. The kind of symbol you do not ever want. Maybe next time, eh?
