The Mariners host the Yankees for three games this week.
The Mariners’ quest to sneak into the playoffs at the very last minute took a positive turn over the weekend. Their series win over the Rangers combined with the Twins series loss to the Reds and loss yesterday to the Guardians means that the M’s are just two games back in the Wild Card race and four games back in the AL West. With 12 games left to play, the Mariners will essentially need to win every series from here on out to have a shot at a playoff berth and going 8-4 might not even be enough to do it. They’ll face a stiff challenge this week with a big three-game series against the best team in the American League.
It hasn’t been a pretty or smooth season, but the Yankees currently hold the best record in the AL and a three-game lead in the AL East. They got off to a really strong start in April and May, swooned in June and July, but have come back strong during the late summer just in time to make their push to the playoffs. FanGraphs sees them as the favorite to win the World Series which makes this series a pretty good litmus test for the Mariners to see if they can hang with the best or if they’ll wilt under pressure.
The Yankees lineup runs through Aaron Judge and Juan Soto. As they go, their whole team goes. Thankfully, they’re both producing at historic rates and their share of offensive production as a duo is better than any other pair of hitters since 2000. Judge just recently broke a career-long home run drought that lasted 16 games. New York’s biggest acquisition at the trade deadline was Jazz Chisholm Jr.; he’s provided a spark for the lower half of this lineup while slotting in naturally at third base, a position he had never played in his career until joining the Yanks.
Luis Gil has been the most surprising key contributor for the Yankees this year. After making his brief major league debut in 2021, Tommy John surgery wiped out nearly all of his ‘22 and ‘23 seasons. He wasn’t exactly a highly regarded prospect when he was working his way through New York’s farm system because his limited repertoire presented a ton of relief risk. Well, he’s managed to harness his big fastball-slider combo to great effect this year and has been one of the Yankees’ best starters when they needed it most. He can be a little wild at times, but the huge whiff rates he’s generating with his fastball offsets those baserunners for the most part.
Nestor Cortes hit a bit of a rough patch in July and early August — a five-game stretch in which he allowed 24 runs in 23.1 innings — but otherwise he’s been a solid frontline starter for the Yankees. He leans heavily on his four-seam fastball and mixes in a cutter, sweeper, and changeup to keep batters off balance. Speaking of off balance, Cortes is known to use all sorts of mechanical trickery to add deception to his delivery.
Clarke Schmidt was in the middle of a breakout season when he was forced to hit the IL with a lat strain in late May. He only recently returned a few weeks ago and has looked pretty good in two starts in September. Schmidt throws two different breaking balls with spin rates that average over 3,000 rpm and both his sinker and cutter have extremely high spin rates for those pitch types. The spin isn’t just for show either; his breaking balls are extremely hard to square up even if they’re not generating massive whiff rates, and for swings-and-misses, he turns to his two fastballs.
The Astros lost the opening game of their series against the Padres yesterday and the Tigers crept a half game ahead of the Mariners in the Wild Card standings with a come-from-behind victory over the Royals yesterday. Rooting/scoreboard watching interests this week:
