Mariners vs Rangers: The Final Series against Texas for 2021

If it seems like the Mariners have been playing the Rangers a lot lately… well, you’d be right. This will be their fourth series against Texas since July 2nd, making it 12 games played against them out of a stretch of 40 games. It is going to be the last series that Seattle plays against them this season, which gives all Mariners fans a bit of good news.

No more Jonah Heim.

Jonah Heim?! Yeah, Jonah Heim. He has been destroying the Mariners all year when they play. Check out his stats against the Mariners as compared to the rest of the MLB.

The Mariners have struggled mightily with Jonah Heim.

It’s not just that he’s hit well against them, but that he had back-to-back walk-off home runs against them as well. If not for that, the Mariners would actually be playing incredibly well against the Rangers this season. They’re currently 10-6 against them, and could easily be 12-4 if not for Heim.

Enough about him though, as I’m getting frustrated/sad just thinking about him. Let’s take a look at the pitching matchups in the series.

Mariners vs. Rangers – Pitching matchups in final series

• Game 1: Tuesday @ 5:05 PM: Anderson vs. Howard
• Game 2: Wednesday @ 5:05 PM: Gonzales vs Foltynewicz
• Game 3: Thursday @ 11:05 AM: Flexen vs Dunning

JP Crawford has to be chomping at the bit to see Folty again in this series. If these teams were put into an SAT prep questionnaire, it would look something like this.

Jonah Heim is to the Mariners as JP Crawford is to Mike Foltynewicz.

Half of Heim’s home runs this year have come off of the Mariners, but half of JP Crawford’s home runs have come off of Folty. Yup. Three of the six have been hit against the Texas SP.

The Mariners will be looking to get back on track with their starting pitchers, breaking the long streak of 5+ innings by having Kikuchi and Gilbert both fall short of making it through five innings. It will start with Tyler Anderson, who has pitched at least five innings in each start this season. Marco has looked stellar lately, and Chris Flexen has been pitching a lot better on the road lately.

Mariners vs. Rangers – What to expect on offense

The Mariners offense showed up late against the Blue Jays for a strong opening win in the series, and then busted out late in the second game of the series, putting up nine runs. It seems like they could be clicking, and would be a nice change as opposed to the 3.0 runs a game they scored from August 3rd to August 13th (10 games). The bright spot is that they gave up just 28 runs in that same time period.

As for Texas, they had really been struggling before the Oakland series that they just completed. From August 2nd to August 12th (10 games), they scored just 2.2 runs a game while giving up 5.0 runs a game. That Oakland series was better, as they won the series 2-1, even though they and Oakland each scored 18 runs.

Which offense could we see from each team? Well, it’s been pretty even, with Seattle scoring 67 runs and Texas scoring 63 runs. However, Texas has had three big games, scoring 7, 9, and 10 runs. Seattle has only scored above five runs twice. If the previous games are any indicator, Texas has the potential to go big, whereas Seattle is more consistent. Take note that the 9 and 10 from Texas occurred in the first series against Seattle, so it’s unlikely they do that again.

Seattle is in a good spot against Texas. The Rangers traded away a couple of their best players, and their team is definitely more focused on the long term than they were a month ago. It’s a good opportunity for the Mariners to take advantage and win another series, and up their season record against Texas to 12-7.