Ichiro Suzuki is 51 years old now, dark hair liberally sprinkled with gray, a Hall of Famer tagged with the stuffy title of ‘special assistant to the chairman’ on the Seattle Mariners masthead.
And he’s also the physical embodiment of just how long the Mariners have gone between American League West division titles.
Suzuki was just a rookie in 2001 when he kick-started the Mariners to a 116-win season, the AL West title and a Most Valuable Player award to go along with his top rookie honor, seemingly ushering in an era of prosperity.
The game can be cruel, however, and the wait sometimes interminable to repeat such success. Which is why the city of Seattle and the Mariners themselves could finally exhale on Wednesday, Sept. 24, when they defeated the Colorado Rockies 9-2 to seal their first AL West title in 24 years.
The Mariners completed a startling rise from consistent yet benign threat to, perhaps, the team to beat in the AL playoffs with a resounding finishing kick, winning 16 of their last 17 games to blast past the Houston Astros and end their streak of seven consecutive full-season division titles.
And from start to finish, the Big Dumper was their bell cow.
Cal Raleigh’s otherworldly season continued in the clincher, as he hit his 59th and 60th home runs in the rout of the Rockies, sending the crowd at T-Mobile Park into delirium with a first-inning, upper deck shot and an eighth-inning blast for No. 60.
Raleigh is no Ichiro – not bound for 3,000 hits nor blessed with otherworldly athletic ability. But Raleigh has driven the Mariners this far behind his impeccable handling of the Mariners’ excellent pitching staff and the 60 home runs he has crushed – most ever for a primary catcher or switch-hitter in major league history.
The resurgence of Julio Rodriguez – he now has 32 homers and 28 stolen bases – and continued offensive emergence of shortstop J.P. Crawford has galvanized a Mariners lineup that has been reluctant to add to an offensively flaccid group the previous two seasons.
This year, president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto finally went big at the trade deadline, importing corner infielders Eugenio Suarez and Josh Naylor. While Suarez has struggled, Naylor has shined, accruing an .820 OPS and 2.1 WAR in less than two months while lengthening Seattle’s lineup.
And now, the Mariners (89-69) find themselves in an enviable spot: Closing in on the AL’s second-best record and a first-round bye in the playoffs. They clinched the division flag by wiping out the Rockies, as Raleigh hit home runs No. 59 and No. 60, and Rodriguez his 32nd, an appropriate flourish to capture the AL West title.
The Mariners’ lone playoff appearance the past quarter-century came in 2022, when they won a wild-card series at Toronto before those Astros swept them out of the AL Division Series.
Now, they should be able to cool their heels and begin their playoff quest at home against a wild-card survivor.
