Seattle Mariners 2021 Wild Card Chase Breakdown, Pt. 1

As of this morning, the Seattle Mariners find themselves heading home after a six-game road trip that saw them sweep the Arizona Diamondbacks before dropping a tough series to the Houston Astros.

Winning 4 of 6 in this stretch was probably the realistic expectation for this group, but losing the second game against Houston was a big game to drop (especially being up going into the bottom of the 9th inning).  The Wild Card standings show Seattle 1 game behind Toronto, 2.5 games behind New York, and 3.0 games behind Boston with 22 games left on our schedule.

I’m going to walk through the same ritual that I find myself doing every morning before I get out of bed: what needs to happen for us to climb into one of the two playoff spots within the next 2 weeks.  This first article takes an in-depth look at every team’s schedule over the next two weeks to determine what the Wild Card landscape will look like.  Then, we’ll figure out what needs to happen for the Mariners to actually make the 2021 playoffs.

We did something like this a couple of weeks ago, but things can change quickly in the world of baseball. Here’s the updated look with ~20 games left at how things stand in the American League Wild Card Race.