Even Bryan Woo's gem couldn't stop Yankees from destroying Mariners' momentum

The Seattle Mariners rolled into New York after a clean-sheet sweep of the Pittsburgh Pirates and wins in 15 out of their last 23 games. But after what the Yankees did to them in a three-game sweep, they might as well get wheeled out of Yankee Stadium.

After dropping the first two games against the Yankees in blowout fashion, Bryan Woo made it look easy in putting the Mariners on track to salvage a win on Thursday. After walking the first two batters he faced, he retired the next 20 and took a no-hitter into the eighth inning. The Mariners' lead at the time was 5-0.

Gut, meet punch.

We could write whole danged paragraphs on how Giancarlo Stanton destroyed a fat fastball from Matt Brash, how Andrés Muñoz seemingly tipped his pitches amid his ninth-inning meltdown, and about how Julio Rodríguez did everything right only to not nail Anthony Volpe at home to preserve a 5-5 tie in the bottom of the 10th.

Ultimately, though, the short of it is all those things happened and conspired to drop the Mariners' win probability for the game from a high of 99 percent down to zero percent. That is not merely a bad loss. It is the worst loss of the Mariners' season.

The Mariners faced an actually good team and were completely outclassed

Even before Thursday's catastrophic loss, this series had ominous vibes for the Mariners from the start. Yes, there was the intrigue of Cal Raleigh and Aaron Judge continuing their AL MVP race in person, but there was also rain in the forecast for Game 1 on Tuesday. And as soon as the skies did open up, there seemed to go whatever chance the M's had of winning this series.

The Yankees piled on 19 runs in the first two games, all of which came between the fifth inning on Tuesday and the sixth inning on Wednesday. It's hard to win games like that, especially when you're a team that is ostensibly built around pitching like the 2025 Mariners.

Other things that cost the Mariners included a critical error by Rodríguez on Wednesday and a semi-questionable decision to return Logan Gilbert to the mound after a lengthy mid-game rain delay on Tuesday. He just wasn't sharp, for which we submit the cement-mixer slider that Stanton crushed for a game-breaking three-run homer.

Then again, is it really the specifics of how the Mariners were stopped in their tracks that matter?

We're inclined to say "nah." They are 93 games into their season, after all, and their 48-45 record doesn't obscure any kind of hidden truth that this is an elite team hidden under fossilized layers of bad luck. They have scored only 11 more runs than they have allowed, and they are now 17-23 against teams with winning records.

These are not the marks of a good team such as, say, the Yankees. For all their flaws, they have scored 106 more runs than they have allowed and have dominated (26-11) American League foes outside their own division. The 9.7 percent chance of winning the World Series that FanGraphs gives them does feel high, but it also feels more believable than the 3.8 percent chance that the Mariners have.

If that number ultimately goes up, it will be because the Mariners did what they had to do and went and got help ahead of the July 31 trade deadline. All the signs in the world say that they will, which is indicative that Jerry Dipoto and the brass see what we all see:

As constructed, the 2025 Mariners aren't fit to clear even Dipoto's notoriously low bar.

3 up, 3 down for the Mariners after Yankees series

Up: Bryan Woo, Randy Arozarena, Jorge Polanco

Make that 18 straight starts for Woo in which he's completed at least six innings, and this one saw him slightly lower his ERA to 2.75. He was clearly feeling some extra adrenaline pitching in New York for the first time after being named an All-Star, as his fastball got up to a career-high 98.7 mph.

Though the national focus is rightfully on Raleigh and his amazing home run pace — 36 and counting — it's Arozarena who's taking his turn carrying the Mariners' lineup right now. He's batting .317 with seven home runs and 16 runs batted in over his last 21 games.

It's also nice to see Polanco warming again. He went deep twice in this series and he now has three homers in July. He had hit two in 46 games coming into this month.

Downs: Logan Gilbert, Logan Evans, Julio Rodríguez

Gilbert was cruising before the rain came on Tuesday, as he had allowed only one hit through four innings. But after the Yankees pounced on him for five runs in the fifth and sixth, his ERA in five starts since returning from the IL with a flexor strain rose to 5.68. His velocity is fine and he's still using his splitter to good effect, but he's just not beating hitters in the strike zone like he was earlier in the year.

One feels for Evans. Though he is the better choice than Emerson Hancock to be in the rotation right now, he's also a pitch-to-contact type who had issues with the long ball even before he faced the Bronx Bombers on Wednesday. Of course they got to him for two homers and six runs, which was pretty much the ballgame.

As for Rodríguez, well, it's not good.

As if the error on Wednesday wasn't bad enough, he really didn't need a foul ball smacking off his leg on Thursday in his life. Yet what the Mariners absolutely do need from him is more offense. He was consistently OK in April, May, and June, but has now gone ice-cold in July with four hits in 36 at-bats.

Yes, he is an All-Star. But he is supposed to be a superstar, and he is simply not that right now.