A disappointing 4-7 road trip has left the Seattle Mariners on the brink of playoff elimination.
The Mariners dropped crucial series to the Houston Astros and Toronto Blue Jays, leaving them two games out of the AL wild-card race with three to play. Anything can happen until a team is mathematically eliminated, but it would take nothing short of a miracle for the Mariners to make the postseason at this point.
Seattle’s offense continued to struggle apart from a pair of outbursts, while the rotation finally hit a wall and showed signs of regression. While the Mariners have put together a better season than just about anyone anticipated, it still hurt to watch the team crash so hard suddenly when it was given a golden opportunity.
If the Mariners are indeed eliminated this weekend, they will spend a lot of time looking back on this past road trip. Seattle was hit with an absolutely brutal travel schedule at an unfortunate time, but a playoff-caliber team needed to do better than 2-5 against the Astros and Blue Jays.
As disastrous as the road trip was, the Mariners did have one silver lining.
Phenom Taijuan Walker received the start against Toronto on Wednesday, desperately needing a win to boost Seattle’s hopes. While the Mariners would lose 1-0 on a bloop single in the eighth inning, Walker would turn in the best outing of his career.
Walker went eight strong innings, allowing the one run on four hits while walking one and striking out six batters. He looked more dominant than that strikeout total would indicate and was far better with his command than in some previous starts.
Wednesday’s outing put Walker’s electric fastball on display, as it touched 97 miles per hour with late life. Walker has shown flashes with the pitch before but struggled to throw strikes with it on a consistent basis.
According to FanGraphs.com, Walker has thrown his fastball for a strike only 63.6 percent of the time in 2014. That percentage was much improved on Wednesday, as Walker threw 99 pitches overall for 66 strikes.
Better fastball command helped make Walker’s arsenal of off-speed pitches more effective. Walker mixed in a devastating splitter well on Wednesday to go with his curveball and changeup, which looked better than in any other previous start of his young major league career.
His standout moment came on a 3-2 pitch in the fourth inning to Jose Bautista, as Walker was able to completely fool one of the best hitters in the majors with a curveball. Bautista doesn’t look so off-balance often, as he has walked more than he’s struck out in 2014.
The Blue Jays were fooled all night until the eighth inning, as Mariners announcer Aaron Goldsmith highlights.
Nobody was panicking about a 22-year-old Walker yet, but Mariners fans were patiently waiting for Walker to display his full arsenal. He did that effectively on Wednesday.
Manager Lloyd McClendon believes Walker’s outing was an important step toward building for next season despite the disappointing result of the game, via Greg Johns of MLB.com.
In all of this, that’s one thing I certainly don’t want to get lost, That young man threw a tremendous ballgame, really stepped up and did everything we asked him to do. He was outstanding. I think his last two outings have really given us a glimpse of the future. We have a lot to be proud of and this young man is going to be part of that future. We have a lot to be excited about. Was this important? Yeah. I think it was. I think he’s turned a corner and is starting to move in the right direction.
Walker is going to be an important part of the Mariners in 2015. If Walker lives up to his potential, the Mariners will have an outstanding rotation again, even if Chris Young leaves in free agency or Roenis Elias isn’t as effective.
The 4-7 road trip put a serious dent in the Mariners’ hopes, but it gave them one reason to be optimistic for the future.
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