Seattle Mariners have golden opportunity before end of season

The Seattle Mariners are on the brink of ending a postseason drought stretching back to the 2001 season. However, there’s much more left in the remaining 15 games than just making sure there will be meaningful baseball in October.

With a favorable schedule, the Seattle Mariners have a chance to improve their seeding in the Wild Card round

Entering Wedneday’s action, the Seattle Mariners held a five-game lead over the Baltimore Orioles for final American League Wild Card spot. In the three-team Wild Card standings, the Mariners are 2.5 games behind the Toronto Blue Jays and a half-game behind the Tampa Bay Rays. The difference in the standings is the difference between the Mariners being the six seed and traveling to face the Cleveland Guardians or Seattle, as the fourth seed, hosting the four-five matchup.

With the Mariners needing to outperform both the Blue Jays and Rays as the season winds down, the Major League Baseball schedule-makers have handed Seattle a gift.

The opponents that make up the final 15 games of the season for the Mariners (five against Oakland, three against Kansas City, three against Texas, and four against Detroit) have a combined .390 winning percentage. That’s the easiest schedule to finish the season of any MLB team, and the only remaining schedule that has a winning percentage of less than .400.

Meanwhile, the two teams ahead of Seattle in the Wild Card standings (Toronto and Tampa Bay) are both in the top seven in terms of the hardest-remaining schedules (Tampa Bay’s .573 opponent winning percentage is second while Toronto’s .543 comes in seventh). By the way, Toronto travels to Tampa Bay for a four-game series this Thursday through Sunday.

Seattle is primed to not only get into the postseason, but also climb up the Wild Card standings as well before the season comes to a close on October 5 if they can take advantage of what seems to be a golden opportunity ahead of them.