Mariners' goat from crushing ALCS loss is turning 2026 into a revenge tour

Halfway through the Seattle Mariners' 2026 season, it feels safe to say that Eduard Bazardo is not going to be the Brad Lidge of his generation. We say this not to mock him for lacking creds as a two-time All-Star closer, but out of a cocktail of relief and admiration.

Even if the timing isn't always ideal, Bazardo has been Dan Wilson's preferred option out of the bullpen for extinguishing fires. He's inherited a team-high 24 runners and allowed only five to score. The 30-year-old also has a 1.96 ERA through 39 appearances, thus taking an improbable step forward after he broke out last season by working 73 games and posting a 2.52 ERA.

What everyone remembers, of course, is how Bazardo's 2025 season ended.

He was the guy who threw the sinker in Game 7 of the ALCS that George Springer turned into a game-breaking, series-winning home run. In many ways, it was not Bazardo's fault. Everyone but Wilson knew he should not have been in there, and not just because Andrés Muñoz was the better option. Springer had already faced Bazardo twice before in the series, and had seen everything the righty had to offer.

All the same, to say that Bazardo took it hard would be understating it. He was devastated, which only made the moment feel more like the time that Lidge got taken to the moon by Albert Pujols in Game 5 of the 2005 NLCS. It was a homer that sent Lidge into a wilderness from which he took years to emerge.

Evidently, Bazardo wants nothing to do with that same wilderness.

Mariners would be wise to not push their faith in Eduard Bazardo too far

As you can with basically any reliever not named Mason Miller, you can find ways to pick Bazardo's performance apart. He's giving up a .299 average to lefties. There's also plenty of blue on his Baseball Savant profile, implying that his 2026 success is largely owed to good luck.

Then again, one fears burnout just as much as regression.

Bazardo hasn't gotten much of a chance to rest since the start of the 2025 season. He worked 78.2 innings in the regular season last year, plus another 11.2 in the postseason. And in lieu of ramping up slowly during spring training this year, he made five appearances for a Venezuela squad that won the World Baseball Classic.

He's nonetheless on track to appear in 74 games, an increase on the workload he handled last year. That simply shouldn't be on purpose, but one of the only things to be said in Wilson's defense right now is that he doesn't have much of a choice.

Seattle's skipper is working with a seven-man bullpen that has already lost Matt Brash and Carlos Vargas to serious injuries after they, too, handled heavy workloads in 2025. Even if Aroldis Chapman isn't the answer, the front office badly needs to be working the phones for reinforcements.

If Bazardo ends up getting worked harder than he can handle, that might not mean the end of just his inspiring comeback. It could be the straw that finally breaks the bullpen's back.

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