TAMPA — They know the stinging feeling as much as anyone, having been here each of the past two seasons.
The sunken emotions of coming short of expectations for a starved fanbase, but more so, themselves. The managerial transition that came last August when things were spiraling. The missed opportunity of springboarding momentum after ending their 20-year playoff drought in 2022.
All of these factors were within the Mariners’ commentary after Tuesday’s 6-5 loss to the Rays — specifically, from Cal Raleigh, J.P. Crawford and Bryan Woo — which revealed blunt urgency to not let unflattering history repeat itself, having finished as the first team on the outside looking in from 2023-24.
“You’ve just got to take accountability for it,” Woo said, following his shortest start of the season (five-plus innings). “At this point of the year, you can make all the excuses you want. You’ve just got to play better. You’ve got to be better. You’ve got to have more urgency. I think all the guys in the locker room, especially the guys that have been here the last couple of years, are sick and tired of the last couple of years of what has happened in August and September. It’s up to us to flip the script and do something about it.”
Added Raleigh, who crushed his 51st homer but was also the final out with the bases loaded in a one-run game in the ninth: “You don’t want to be in that situation again for three years in a row. That’s just the truth. There’s no sugarcoating it. That would be a terrible, terrible way to go out. But it’s our job to do everything we can to push through and make it a reality of being in the playoffs.”
The Mariners are clinging to the final American League Wild Card spot by 1 1/2 games over Texas, 2 1/2 games over Kansas City and 3 1/2 games over Tampa Bay, which is quietly thrusting itself back into the race after winning the first two games of this series at George M. Steinbrenner Field. Moreover, Seattle fell to 4 1/2 games behind the Red Sox and Yankees, who hold the top two spots.
Seattle’s first AL West title since 2001 has seemed a realistic expectation all season, especially after making significant additions at the Trade Deadline. Yet, the club has been unable to catch first-place Houston, which also lost on Tuesday, maintaining its three-game lead.
“It’s not a lack of focus,” Crawford said. “It’s not a lack of work. This is the hardest-working group of men I’ve been with ever in my career. It’s not any of that. It’s just that sometimes, when we get knocked down in the fight, we stay down — and we can’t have that right now.”
Playing away from T-Mobile Park has been the most glaring challenge in this late-season spin. The Mariners fell to 1-4 on this three-city road trip, have lost 10 of their past 12 road games and are now 32-39 overall on the road.
“I don’t really have an answer,” said Raleigh, whose AL MVP candidacy will almost certainly hinge on the Mariners reaching the playoffs. “We’re not playing good baseball on the road. Plain and simple. I don’t really have much after that.”
A team meeting was called pregame that delayed media availability by one hour, the type of gathering that takes place in these types of moments.
“Nobody is going to give it to us,” Raleigh said. “We’ve got to go take it. We can’t sit around and just expect teams to hand it to us and that it’s going to be easy, because it’s not. … If you’re expecting it to be easy, expecting it to be handed to you, it’s going to be a harsh reality.”
The Mariners did respond after Woo allowed two runs in the first inning, with their first three-homer inning of the year in the fourth. But those solo shots weren’t enough to yield the type of win that they were hoping could springboard them coming out of the pregame gathering.
“We’re better than we’re playing right now, and it’s not going to change unless we do something about it, to change it,” Woo said. “And the coaches, [president of baseball operations] Jerry [Dipoto], whoever, can say as much as they want, it’s up to us to do something about it, to change it. The ball is in our court.”
