Mariners have perfect timing to put a hurting on AL West rival Astros

In an ideal world, the Seattle Mariners would be heading into their four-game showdown with the Houston Astros with a perfect 6-0 record to show for their 10-game road trip. But, alas, the Chicago White Sox proved to be peskier than expected.

All the same, here is what passes for the good news for those on the Seattle side of the Mariners-Astros rivalry: Right now, Houston is kind of a mess.

Injuries and mounting losses have the Mariners catching the Astros at exactly the right time to do damage

Despite the blip they hit against the Toronto Blue Jays and New York Yankees earlier this month, the Mariners are 25-13 since they really got their 2025 ball rolling by taking two of three from the Astros in Seattle back in early April. Though they initially recovered from that series defeat, the Astros have since lost 11 of their last 20 games.

It isn't just the losses that are crushing the souls of Astros fans. Indeed, the Ls are largely downstream of the toll that the injury bug has been taking on what was a flawed roster from the beginning.

Yordan Alvarez has been sidelined since May 3 with a hand injury that was supposed to be minor, but which is still causing him pain several weeks later. As a long-time torturer of the Mariners — he has 15 home runs and a .989 OPS against them, plus... you know, that whole thing — it is not exactly a net negative for Seattle that he won't be in the lineup this weekend.

Otherwise, what the Astros are dealing with in their starting rotation rivals even the injury issues the Mariners have had with their own rotation. Houston just lost Hayden Wesneski to Tommy John surgery, and now Ronel Blanco is also dealing with soreness in his elbow.

That's two tough pitchers the Mariners won't be facing in this series, and they'll also just plain miss a third. Hunter Brown, who ranks at No. 1 in MLB.com's starting pitcher power rankings, just took his latest turn in the rotation on Wednesday.

For their part, the Mariners are set to welcome back George Kirby on Thursday and will also be throwing Bryan Woo and Luis Castillo at the Astros. Kirby is a strikeout-to-walk ratio god with a 1.55 ERA against Houston, while Woo and Castillo have each been rocks in an otherwise brittle rotation.

As it bears a .695 OPS and is scoring under four runs per game, the Astros offense that Seattle hurlers will be up against is the weakest iteration of any Astros offense in over a decade. It will be important not to get overconfident, however, and not just because Houston's bats are significantly more dangerous at home in Daikin Park.

The Mariners aren't exactly an offensive juggernaut in their own right these days, after all. Things were going very well for the lineup for a minute there, but it's scoring just 3.6 runs per game since May 3.

To boot, Julio Rodríguez was the only mainstay who bothered to show up for three games' worth of frustrating at-bats opposite the White Sox. He homered twice and drove in seven of the 11 runs the Mariners scored, with Randy Arozarena going especially cold with zero hits in 12 at-bats.

Then again, a series against Houston might be just what Arozarena needs to get hot again. The comeback he led against the Astros in April wasn't the first time he'd menaced them, as Houston fans surely remember the four home runs he hit in the 2020 ALCS.

Regardless of precisely how it happens, the Mariners stand to put a healthy bit of distance between them and the Astros if they win this series. They have a 3.5-game lead for first place in the AL West as it is, with FanGraphs rating them as a 60.5 percent favorite to win the division.

Granted, the Mariners led the Astros by as many as 10.0 games last year, and look how that worked out. Yet while that is surely another warning about overconfidence, the vibes this year are different.

The Mariners of 2025 have already proven resilient and can only get better as they get healthier. The Astros of 2025, on the other hand, are sort of a lesser son of greater fathers, and one that is finding both resilience and health hard to come by.

Game Times and Probable Pitchers for Mariners vs. Astros, May 22-25

• Thursday, May 22 at 5:10 p.m. PT: George Kirby vs. Lance McCullers Jr.
• Friday, May 23 at 5:10 p.m. PT: Emerson Hancock vs. Ryan Gusto
• Saturday, May 24 at 1:10 p.m. PT: Bryan Woo vs. Framber Valdez
• Sunday, May 25 at 11:10 a.m. PT: Luis Castillo vs. TBD