SEATTLE headed out on a two-stop road trip this week, starting with a series in St. Louis, still searching for the kind of run that has eluded it a week before the end of the first month of the season. The Mariners arrived after a walk-off win Wednesday afternoon spared them a sweep by the A's and capped a 3-3 homestand against AL West opponents.
The timing matters because Seattle has not been far off the pace in the standings, even if the results have not matched the underlying numbers. No team in the Mariners' division had run away, and Seattle had underperformed its Pythagorean record by two wins and its base runs record by three, making it the unluckiest team in the majors by both measures.
That leaves mariners vs cardinals as more than a stop on the schedule. The Mariners are trying to turn close calls into a steady stretch before the season moves deeper into May, while the Cardinals are in the early stages of a major transition under Chaim Bloom, who took over as president of baseball operations this offseason. St. Louis had already moved Nolan Arenado, Sonny Gray, Willson Contreras, and Brendan Donovan, and was leaning more heavily on young players and a thinner farm-system pipeline.
The Cardinals still have pieces that can make them difficult to handle. JJ Wetherholt made his major league debut on Opening Day. Jordan Walker had already hit eight home runs early in the season. Iván Herrera and Alec Burleson were everyday regulars, while Masyn Winn and Victor Scott II anchored the defense. Andre Pallante remained the kind of back-end starter who can get innings and pound the ground, though he did not miss many bats and walked a few too many. His four-seam fastball produced the highest groundball rate of any four-seamer in baseball. Matthew Liberatore, once one of St. Louis' top pitching prospects, had been tried as a high leverage reliever in 2024 after a strong start to last season in the rotation before he wore down during the summer.
Seattle does not need a perfect trip to make this one count. It needs the first signs that its early-season frustration is starting to give way to the kind of stretches that can keep a club in the race when the division has not settled yet.