Series Preview: Mariners (55-48) at Yankees (69-34)

After a 3-1 series loss to the Astros, things don’t get any easier for the Mariners as they trudge up to the Bronx to face the Yankees, the only team better than the Astros in the American League and the second-best team in baseball behind the Dodgers. It could be argued the Yankees are even more impressive a squad than the Dodgers, not being gifted the Rockies and Diamondbacks to beat up on in-division, and unlike the Astros, who (recent sweep aside) get to wail on the hapless Athletics as well as their other favorite AL West punching bags, have to face a division which houses two near-locks for Wild Card spots along with a surprisingly good .500 team in the Orioles and a surprisingly bad .500 team in the Red Sox. The Mariners will also have to go into this series shorthanded, with Julio Rodríguez hitting the IL with a wrist injury and Ty France’s status up in the air, although they’ll hopefully be buoyed by newcomer Luis Castillo joining the rotation this series.

Spare a thought for the brave and doughty Yankees fans, suffering through a World Series appearance drought that dates all the way back to…2009. That’s their longest appearance drought since the interminable stretch between 1982 and 1995, which for many newer-minted Yankees fans might as well be the Paleozoic Era, but for dyed-in-the-wool Mariners oldheads is the time between Fisher-Price cars and getting their driver’s licenses. All of that looks to end this year, though; the Dodgers are still favored to win at most sports betting outlets (+350), but the Yankees are right on their heels (+375). FanGraphs projects the Astros with slightly better odds to win the WS than the Yankees, but 538 significantly favors the Bronx Bombers. It’s not hard to squint and see the Yankees and Astros battling it out in the ALCS, as the two teams match up almost evenly, with Houston maybe having a slight edge on pitching and the Yankees a slight one on offense (albeit with both teams playing their home games in Baby’s First Ballpark, Plan A and Plan A reverse). If the Mariners thought they were getting any kind of a break after finishing up their season series against Houston (Hoo, and we cannot stress this enough, Ray), this next stretch against the Yankees should disabuse them of that notion pretty quickly.

The 2022 Yankees have been lifted by a definite All-Star/maybe MVP-quality season from Aaron Judge, seemingly determined to drive his value as high as humanly possible in his final year before free agency. Judge has always been a three-true-outcomes kind of player but this year he’s continued an improved approach from last season where he shaved a solid 5% off his K-rate–think his 2017 52-home run season, but with better plate discipline. Scary stuff. After being traded at the deadline last year, Anthony Rizzo has settled into pinstripes quite nicely, finding he doesn’t need Yankee Stadium’s short porch to bop homers like he was still in the friendly confines of Wrigley Stadium; his .276 ISO is a career-high. Giancarlo Stanton rounds out the trio of Yankees power hitters, with 24 homers of his own, but he’s never been what one would call a “pure” hitter. It’s okay, though, because that role is filled for the Yankees by DJ LeMahieu, who’s actually been the Yankees’ third-most valuable regular by wRC+ thanks to his propensity to get the bat on the ball while walking more than he strikes out. The Yankees lineup gets a little stars-and-scrubs-y outside of this top crew, but a new hero seems to emerge every night, from the surprising performance of veteran Matt Carpenter (which feels like a post-season story in the making) to a surprising resurgence from an oft-injured (and much-maligned in the past by Yankees fans) Aaron Hicks to an All-Star performance from catcher Jose Trevino. And while Brian Cashman and Co. have gotten flack from the fans in the past for not being active enough at the trade deadline–there’s definitely a fair amount of jealousy over the Castillo acquisition–the Yankees did act proactively to replace a struggling Joey Gallo with Andrew Benintendi, who should be an upgrade provided the team doesn’t have to travel to Toronto for any important games.

Probable Pitchers

Updated Stuff+ Explainer

• Stuff+ scores for Mariners starters

Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images

In September 2019, Domingo Germán was suspended for 81 games after violating the league’s domestic violence policy, and because he was suspended so late in the season, he wound up missing the entire 2020 season after it was shortened to just 60 games. He returned to the Yankees rotation last year but was bounced to the bullpen by July and optioned to the minors after the trade deadline. A spring shoulder injury forced him to miss the majority of this season; he was only recently called up from the minors a couple of weeks ago. He generates good whiff rates on all four of his pitches but he’s prone to allow loud contact off all of them too. That’s led to some pretty extreme home run rates despite a strikeout rate well above average for his career.

The survivor of two successful Tommy John surgeries, Jameson Taillon has found a way to adapt through a pretty lengthy injury history that also includes a victory against testicular cancer. He’s never really put together gaudy strikeout rates in the majors — his 23.2% K% last year was a career high — but he’s transformed himself into an elite contact manager this year. He’s cut back on the usage of his four-seamer in favor of a pitch mix that features six different looks thrown at least 10% of the time. He can command all six of those pitches and has the third lowest walk rate among all qualified starters this year.

When Gerrit Cole joined the Astros back in 2018, he became the model for modern pitching development. His rising four-seam fastball and nasty slider became the envy of every pitching coach across baseball. He’s continued his dominance since joining the Yankees in 2020, though he’s been burned by the tiny bandbox in New York, pushing his ERA and FIP above three over the last three years. His strikeout rate is also the lowest it’s been since he was a Pirate; it’s obviously still elite at 32.5%. Cole is still clearly one of the best pitchers in the American League, but there are cracks forming as he’s aged and left Houston’s development factory.

The Big Picture:

Things remain mostly unchanged in the AL West: the Astros, yawning chasm, the Mariners, a slightly smaller although still sizable chasm, and the Rangers, who have fallen to nine games under .500 after flirting with that mark for the better part of June. Then there are the Angels [pause for schadenfreude-y laughter], then a slightly larger chasm, then the A’s, currently trailing only the Nationals for the title of “worst team in baseball.”

Despite getting swept and then almost-swept by the Astros–who again, it cannot be stated enough, the Mariners no longer have to face during the regular season–the Mariners remain comfortably in wild card position, although maybe not quite as comfortably as Toronto has been on quite a run lately, going 8-2 over their last 10 games. That could change this next week as they head out on a road trip that will take them to Tampa Bay, Minnesota, and finally to a surprisingly good Baltimore team, all without their home field capital-A advantage. It’s too bad the Tampa Bay-Toronto series is just a two-gamer, as the Mariners are sandwiched between those two teams in the WC race. Watch out for Cleveland, though, nipping closely at Tampa Bay’s heels Back in the AL West, although they have a four-game series with Houston coming up after a soft beginning to their week against the lowly D-Backs.