Josh Naylor's epic playoff-clincher has Mariners fans thirsting for more

The Seattle Mariners and tens of thousands of their fans showed up to T-Mobile Park on Tuesday ready to party. Yet for seven and a half agonizing innings, it looked as if everyone was doomed to be homeward bound with their heads hung low and a sour taste lingering in their mouths.

But Josh Naylor, for one, wasn't having it. He looked straight into the jaws of defeat and snatched a victory with his very own Cal Raleigh moment, and all it did was put the Mariners in the playoffs for the second time in four seasons.

On the off chance that anyone hasn't seen it yet, here's the bases-clearing double by Naylor that turned a 3-1 deficit against the Colorado Rockies into a 4-3 lead, which was quickly turned into a 4-3 final via a clean ninth by Andrés Muñoz:

It just had to be Naylor up in that situation. Even if he isn't the Mariners' biggest star — Raleigh and Julio Rodríguez are right there, you know — the team hasn't been the same since he came over from Arizona before the trade deadline. He has been every kind of upgrade, splitting his working hours between bringing intensity to the clubhouse and ripping base hits.

It's hard to fathom a hit bigger than the one Naylor roped into the left-center gap at T-Mobile Park. It technically swung the game's win probability by a whopping 64.3 percent in favor of the Mariners, and practically saved them from one of their worst losses of the season.

Josh Naylor makes himself even more indispensable by coming to the Mariners' rescue

The Mariners went into Tuesday's tilt riding high, and not just because they all but ended the AL West race with their sweep of the Astros in Houston. They also knew by first pitch that their magic number to clinch a playoff spot was down to one — and courtesy of a former Mariner, no less.

All the Mariners had to do on their end was beat the Rockies. Simple enough, right? They're only [frantically waves hands] one of the worst teams to have ever existed.

Instead, the Mariners seemed to spend the first seven innings suffering from one of the most premature hangovers in human history. They looked lethargic in the field and at the plate, somehow collecting only two hits through the first seven innings. They ultimately let Rockies pitchers record 16 strikeouts, beating their previous season high by three.

Granted, one loss was not going to put the Mariners in any real jeopardy. Not with the Astros 3.0 games back in the AL West at the start of the night. Not with the Detroit Tigers trailing them by 2.0 games in the chase for the AL's No. 2 seed. But when losses that bad are unfolding in real time, you naturally fear a sudden spiral.

To put it in Star Wars terms, what Naylor did was play the Han Solo to the Mariners' Luke Skywalker in his Death Star trench run. And if you thought Mariners fans weren't already desperate to keep him around beyond this season, now you wonder if there's already a GoFundMe meant to help out John Stanton and Jerry Dipoto with the contract.

Regardless of what happens on that front, to say that the Mariners are sitting pretty after Naylor's heroics would be underselling it. With the Astros having lost to the Athletics on Tuesday, the Mariners' magic number to win the AL West for the first time since 2001 is down to one. And at FanGraphs, their odds to win the World Series sit at a league-high 22.0 percent.

True, the Mariners have technically only checked the first box on their postseason to-do list. But now of all times, it's OK to feel greedy.