Cursed statistic will make Mariners fans feel haunted by brutal ALCS blowout

Though they'll surely feel differently about it in Toronto, Game 3 of the American League Championship Series is going to be remembered as a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day in Seattle. And even that is assuming Mariners fans don't memory-hole it entirely.

Yet on the off chance any Mariners fans are curious about how bad the team's 13-4 loss to the Blue Jays on Wednesday really was, we have a fresh data bombshell that suggests, if anything, it was even worse than they think.

Here it is, courtesy of OptaSTATS on X:

Hey, at least Mariners pitchers only walked three Blue Jays hitters. Any more than that, and the offensive onslaught Toronto carried out on Wednesday would have really been embarrassing.

Mariners left reeling from an all-time beatdown in ALCS Game 3

In all seriousness, this is one of those situations where you have to tip your cap, both to Lady Luck for playing it fair and to Blue Jays hitters for putting on a show.

As satisfying as it was for Mariners fans to watch the Blue Jays offense go ice-cold in Games 1 and 2 of the series in Toronto, you didn't even need the numbers to feel like it was unsustainable. But the numbers did indeed suggest as much, as Toronto hit only .137 on balls in play compared to .317 for the Mariners. This was a role reversal of how the two clubs operated in the regular season, in which the Blue Jays and Mariners landed at opposite ends of the BABIP leaderboard.

The Blue Jays did not collect on their outstanding good luck with a series of dinkers and duck snorts on Wednesday. They busted out their best rakes, notably collecting 11 hits on batted balls over 100 mph. That's a Statcast-era record for a playoff game.

Even after all that, the Mariners remain in an enviable position. The 2-0 lead they got in the first two games put history firmly in their corner, and they now have a golden chance to bounce back and claim a 3-1 lead in Game 4 on Thursday. They're up against Max Scherzer, who's both a future Hall of Famer and a 41-year-old who allowed two home runs per nine innings this season.

If the Mariners do win Game 4, they'll be one win shy of going to the World Series for the first time in their history. That's all that matters right now, even if the horror of Game 3 is still fresh.