Let’s first note that I’m writing this on May 2nd about a game that ended before night fully fell on April 30. I will pull strongly from feelings on both days. But let’s start by focusing on the setting on the close of April 30, where the Mariners are 18-12, finding themselves 2 games up on both Houston and Texas in the AL West at the end of the first full month of the season.

When do you think the last time we got off to a start this hot was at this point?

If you said “2001!” reflexively, you are very close, almost essentially right, but a little off. Or perhaps you remember the 2019 where we started 13-2 in a year where we later ignited a pre-planned fire-sale and finished 68-94? Even that wound up worse by April 30.

The actual answer is 2003, a season where famously used only and exactly 5 starters all year en route to finishing 93-69, 2 games out of the (then lone) Wild Card spot and 3 games better than AL Central winner Minnesota (also better than 2 of the NL playoff teams, including World Champion Florida who won 91 regular season games). Of course, in today’s format, we would have been the WC2 team, getting a full series in Boston to throw our famously consistent starters against the best lineup of the year at the time.

For reference, records on April 30 since 2001:
2024 17-13
2023 12-16
2022 11-10
2021 15-12
2020 N/A
2019 18-14
2018 16-11
2017 11-15
2016 13-10
2015 10-12
2014 11-14
2013 12-17
2012 11-12
2011 13-15
2010 11-12
2009 13-9
2008 13-15
2007 10-10
2006 11-15
2005 12-12
2004 8-15
2003 17-10
2002 18-8
2001 20-5

The best lineup of this year so far, you ask? Well the Mariners are certainly in the conversation. After two weeks of doing it with the longball, it was both refreshing and a little weird to watch them put up another big crooked number on the scoreboard with only a solo shot (from Randy) to their name. The 6-run 7th flipped the script on that narrative by returning to an old one of scratch-and-claw Chaos Ball. Except traditional Chaos Ball got us a couple hard-scrabble runs en route to another 1-run win. On Wednesday (and yes, noted, the opponent was the hapless Angels who yes, noted, lost Mike Trout during the game), it was 6 runs that were the margin of the final score, turning a tight back-and-forth contest into a laugher where we put our two most struggling relievers* on the hill for the 8th and 9th to rebuild their confidence.

*worth noting here that our bullpen is functionally all of Seattle’s AND all of Tacoma’s, and by that metric much of Tacoma has struggled harder than Bazardo (8th)

The Mariners’ 7th Inning
Leo Rivas infield single
Samad Taylor bunt single
passed ball gets Rivas and Taylor to 2nd & 3rd
JP Crawford two-run single
Julio Rodriguez RBI double
Cal Raleigh RBI single
pitching change
Randy Arozarena infield single
Mitch Garver walk
Jorge Polanco pinch-hit pop-out
Ben Williamson strikeout
Leo Rivas two-run infield single
Samad Taylor groundout
6 runs on 7 hits, no errors, and 2 left in 11 batters

Four of the seven hits were infield hits, including a bunt! And of course the inning started with a new pitcher. Remember the strategy of working the starter out of the game and jumping on the bullpen? Yeah, that. It’s working.

The starters in Texas are decidedly tougher than they are in LA, with all due respect to former Mariner Tyler Anderson. And it’s hard to overstate the import of the series that starts tonight in Arlington. The momentum has been all Mariners for a while, but it could turn easily and suddenly if we scuffle against the club that most predicted to win the division this year. Our last series there went well overall, but the 6-5 walk-off (off Munoz) loss in a game where we held a 5-0 lead in the 6th still stings as a potential tipping point in that season. Bryan Woo was on the hill then and melted down after 5 shutout innings and he gets the call tonight.

So far, of course, we’re 3-0 against the Rangers after a convincing sweep in Seattle that turned the tide of our April, series win #2 of an active streak that now stands at 7. A series win here will cement the narrative that we have Texas’s number and are the team to beat in the ’25 West. A sweep will be a psychological destruction. But if we lose the series, Texas will gain a lot of momentum for the notion that they can hang with us, maybe our hot start was a fluke. And if they sweep, you will see sheer panic in a Mariner fanbase that’s just starting to believe again, especially amidst all the injuries that have struck our team but didn’t hamper us in the 9-3 romp a couple days back.

You may think a 162-game season is long, but it’s filled with pockets and moments like this, this little snapshot of an April turning to May, a season of momentum either continuing to build or starting to stall. Like life itself, our long slog is built of a series of micro-moments that we need to savor and store for winters to come.

Let’s go!

Mariners Stats:
Comeback Wins: 9
Wire-to-Wire Wins: 9
Comeback Losses: 6
Wire-to-Wire Losses: 6

Multi-Homer Games: 9-5
Single-Homer Games: 8-3
No-Homer Games: 1-4

One-Run Games: 6-3
Extra-Innings Games: 2-2
Shutouts: 1-1

Record When Scoring >5 Runs: 9-2
Record When Scoring 2-5 Runs: 9-5
Record When Scoring <2 Runs: 0-5

Personal Stats:
Watched on TV: 3-6
Listened on Radio: 7-1
Mixed TV/Radio: 7-4
Followed on Gameday: 1-1

Note: Just want to note the particular poetry around some of these stats at this moment in time. Particularly comebacks/wire-to-wires (9,9,6,6) and run records (9,9 on wins and 5,5 on losses with only 2 weird losses [our first 2 games like this!] scoring over 5 runs). My takeaway is that if we can maintain a .642 when scoring 2-5 runs, it’s going to be very hard to beat us. It also helps that our last time in the less than 2 runs category was 11 games ago.