TORONTO — The magic ran out for the Mariners in this 2025 season, one that will go down as one of the most memorable in franchise history, but with an ending whose sting will stand the test of time.
Seattle was in the driver’s seat all night Monday in Game 7 of the American League Championship Series, but it blew a two-run lead when Eduard Bazardo surrendered a back-breaking, go-ahead, three-run homer to Toronto’s George Springer in the seventh inning that wound up being the decisive moment.
With it, the Mariners were stunned in a 4-3 loss — and now, they face an abrupt entry into the offseason, one that they believed would’ve instead begun with a parade.
“It just sucks,” said Cal Raleigh, who was in tears at one point outside the visiting clubhouse at Rogers Centre. “It hurts.”
Still the only franchise that has never reached the World Series — but were eight outs away on Monday night — this one will hurt for an eternity.
For being on the precipice of the pinnacle. For Monday’s stupefying swing of events. For having it ripped away from their grasp by a nemesis in Springer that they know too well. For the same familiar feeling, even if they had never been this close to the Fall Classic in their 49 seasons of existence.
“I hate to use the word failure, but it’s a failure,” Raleigh said. “That’s what we expected, was to get to the World Series and win the World Series, and that’s what the bar is and the standard is. And that’s what we want to hold ourselves accountable to.”
Bazardo was on the mound for the soul-sucking moment, but the chaos truly began in the sequences just prior, via their All-Star ace.
Bryan Woo issued a leadoff walk to Addison Barger to begin the seventh, then a single immediately after that brought the go-ahead run to the plate. Andrés Giménez moved the runners into scoring position with a sacrifice bunt, at which point Mariners manager Dan Wilson turned to Bazardo to face Springer and the top of Toronto’s loaded lineup, despite Andrés Muñoz also being available.
Bazardo has been the bullpen’s catalyst all season, and especially in October. But Muñoz is their two-time All-Star closer, and he did wind up pitching a scoreless eighth — essentially, an inning too late.
Because there was no bottom of the ninth. No lead left to protect. Nothing that Muñoz could do other than limit the damage and hope that the Mariners conjured more of the magic that’s defined this season.
“Bazardo has been the guy that’s gotten us through those situations, those tight ones, especially in the pivot role,” Wilson said. “And that’s where we were going at that point.”
Added Muñoz: “Everybody was ready. But in that moment, they thought that was the best decision, and we all support that, because we’ve been doing that through the whole season. So today it didn’t work. It doesn’t mean that they made a wrong call. It was just that today wasn’t the day. That’s it.”
And Bazardo: “It’s a little bit amazing for me, because I didn’t lose one game all year. That is the most important, and they got me. That is baseball. That can happen.”
Indeed, Bazardo was never on the hook for a loss as a pitcher of record in the regular season, and Monday was just his second blown save. And indeed, he’s been their pivot pitcher all season.
But this was Game 7, and Wilson managed like it for much of the night until that fateful moment. He relieved George Kirby after just four strong innings of one-run ball because Kirby was slated to face Toronto a third time through. And he then turned to Woo, who before this ALCS had never pitched in relief, for the fifth and sixth then the start of the seventh.
“You make your decisions, and sometimes you have to live and die with it,” Wilson said. “I think, again, the way Bazardo has thrown the ball all season long, we were comfortable with where we were and it just, again, didn’t go our way.”
This one will be dissected all winter, and for a starved fanbase, maybe even longer.
Seattle jumped to separate leads of 1-0, 2-1 and 3-1 on Monday, thanks to an RBI single from Josh Naylor in the first inning then solo homers from Julio Rodríguez and Raleigh in the third and fifth, respectively.
But as has been the case throughout this series, while the Mariners were able to create traffic on Monday, much of it was squandered. Seattle stranded seven runners and went 1-for-7 with runners in scoring position in Game 7. Overall, they hit .195 with men on base over these seven games, and their Nos. 7-9 hitters — who were at the plate for three of Monday’s stranded baserunners — hit .071 in those instances.
“There were plenty of shoulda-woulda-coulda’s that you think about,” said J.P. Crawford, who was in the No. 7 spot and laid down a sacrifice bunt with no outs that moved two runners into scoring position in a scoreless second. Crawford also had a one-out double in the fourth but was stranded.
Beyond Monday, the Mariners had series leads of 2-0 and 3-2, becoming just the fourth team to win the first two games of a best-of-seven playoff series on the road but ultimately not advance. Teams with that much of a cushion had moved on in 25 of the previous 28 instances.
“This stings and there’s no question that it’s going to sting,” Wilson said. “But the kind of season they had, doing things that no team in this organization has ever done, and knocking on the door of a World Series — all that, it’s due to how hard they’ve worked, how hard they’ve played all season long.”
Wilson is right about that reality, and that the Mariners are built to get back to this point long term — even if it’s a truth that won’t resonate in the immediate, given its timing.
Seattle has a core of foundational players that will all be back in 2025, and in many cases, well beyond. Rodríguez (through 2029) and Raleigh (through 2030) are both locked up to mega contract extensions, while their entire homegrown rotation of Woo (free agent after 2029), Kirby (2028), Bryce Miller (2029) and Logan Gilbert (2027) are all in their pre-arbitration or arbitration years.
Muñoz has three club options beginning in 2026, the first of which the club will certainly exercise. Crawford has one year left on his extension, same with Victor Robles. Randy Arozarena has one year of arbitration-eligibility remaining.
There will be notable voids — Trade Deadline acquisitions Naylor and Eugenio Suárez will be free agents, and Jorge Polanco will likely test the open market for a more lucrative deal than the one-year, $6 million vesting player option he achieved in a turnaround season.
There’s still a lot to work with in 2026. The sad part for the Mariners — which was evident in a somber clubhouse in Toronto — is that they believed they still had more magic to conjure in 2025.
