SEATTLE — The Mariners played the Rangers again on April 18, 2026, less than a day after ending a four-game skid with a win over Texas. This time, Bryan Woo took the mound for Seattle against MacKenzie Gore as the teams met with the Mariners at 9-13 and the Rangers at 11-10.
Woo was making his fifth start of the season and still searching for his first win. His first four outings produced three no-decisions and two losses, a tidy snapshot of how little has gone right for Seattle early in the year. Gore brought a sharper track record into the matchup, having not allowed more than three runs in any of his five starts before April 18, while giving up only two home runs on the season.
The game came at a useful moment for Seattle, which had won only one series all year before facing Texas and was trying to secure its second. The Mariners’ lone series victory had come in a four-game sweep of the Astros at T-Mobile Park, but that burst was followed by a five-game losing streak and then the four-game skid they had just snapped. They were also sixth in MLB in walk rate at the time, a sign that even as the record sagged, the offense was still forcing pitchers to work.
There was, though, a catch in the numbers that made the night more than a simple reset. Gore had walked six batters in his most recent start before facing Seattle, which meant the Mariners were meeting one of the league’s stingiest starters at a point when his control had already shown some wobble. For a club that had spent much of April chasing consistency, that made the margin for error smaller than the record suggested.
Seattle Sports on 710 AM and Mariners.com were listed for radio coverage as the Mariners tried to turn one win into a real move forward. After the way the month had gone, that was the larger test: not whether Seattle could beat Texas once, but whether it could follow the win with the kind of performance that starts to change an April.
