The Mariners are the team to beat.
Julio Rodríguez, Eugenio Suárez, Victor Robles and Josh Naylor each hit solo home runs Friday as the Mariners won 4-0 in the first game of a crucial series against the Astros. They only needed one of those homers, however, as the pitching staff faced little resistance in tossing a shutout. The win moved the Mariners into first place in the West and second place in the American League. If the season ended today, they would have a first round bye in the playoffs and home field advantage for at least one series.
Bryan Woo dominated the Astros’ lineup through five innings, picking up seven strikeouts and 11 whiffs without allowing a run. A double and a walk in the fourth were the only base runners he allowed; he escaped the jam with back-to-back strikeouts. It was typical Woo excellence: pounding the top rail with the four-seamer, changing planes with the sinker, and luring batters out of the zone with the sweeper and slider. He sat at just 67 pitches and looked set to post one of his best outings of the season.
But while warming up for the sixth, he lobbed a few pitches before exiting with trainers. Dan Wilson said after the game that Woo was dealing with pectoral tightness and will get an MRI on Saturday. Here’s what Woo had to say after the game:
Eduard Bazardo came on for Woo and didn’t miss a beat. He struck out two and didn’t allow a hit or walk over two innings. He lowered his ERA to 2.36 and is now fifth among all relievers in innings pitched (76.1). His 32/4 strikeout-to-walk ratio is top 10 in MLB since the All-Star break. Bazardo has emerged as a solid fourth option in big spots out of the bullpen.
Matt Brash and Andrés Muñoz each worked scoreless innings to close out the win. The Mariners’ staff recorded 11 strikeouts and allowed just three hits and one walk in the shutout. It was their second best performance of 2025 by wOBA allowed (.116).
Julio got the Mariners on the board early with a two-out homer in the first. Hunter Brown fell behind 2-0 and threw a sinker way inside that really should have progressed the count to 3-0. But Julio was looking for the fastball in, got out in front, and jammed it into the left field stands. It wasn’t exactly a Crawford Boxes homer (it would have gone out in most stadiums, according to Baseball Savant), but with an exit velocity of 97.7 mph, it was Julio’s “weakest” home run of the season.
That’s, uh, not true of what Geno did in the fourth. With two strikes, Brown tried to put him a way with a curveball — the best in MLB — and spotted it low and away. Geno was not fooled and blasted it 108.5 mph and 425 feet to left field. The ball landed above and beyond the train tracks at Daikin Park to make it 2-0.
Robles made it 3-0 with his first home run of the year to leadoff the top of the seventh. Naylor made it 4-0 with his 20th of the year in the eighth. With the homer, Naylor joined the 20-20 club — a rarity for a first baseman.
And that was kind of it. Yes, they scattered a few other hits here and there (including three from J.P. Crawford), and they made one or two nice plays on defense. But for as crucial as Friday’s game was in the standings, there just wasn’t that much to it on the field. It wouldn’t have felt out of place in late May as an “everybody wins 54” game that’s quickly forgotten. The Mariners just kind of did their thing: they got a strong (albeit abbreviated) start from their best pitcher, the A-side of the bullpen shut the door, and the lineup hit enough home runs. It was a comfortable win, if not a bit underwhelming for all the excitement leading up.
That’s a good thing, to be clear. The moment did not look too big for them. The Mariners won Friday because they were supposed to. They are the significantly better team by active roster fWAR, run differential, BaseRuns, projections and good ol’ fashioned intuition. And they’re not just better than the Astros — they’re as good or better than any team they’ll face the rest of the way. Playoff odds can be a bit of an abstraction, but it’s notable that the Mariners now have the best odds in all of MLB to win the World Series.
I don’t mean to downplay what it would mean for this organization (of all organizations) to win this series, to win the AL West, and to secure a bye and home field advantage in the playoffs. And I don’t mean to tempt the fate of whatever entity is responsible for engineering decades of disappointment in Seattle. It’s exciting, it’s nerve-wracking, and it’s something to look forward to every night for the foreseeable future.
But the Mariners made clear on Friday that it’s also just business, and they handled it as such.
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