SEATTLE – Chaos reigned around baseball on the final day of the regular season Sunday.
From the Mariners’ perspective, all that really mattered was this: The Cleveland Guardians secured the American League Central title Sunday afternoon and will host division rivals the Detroit Tigers in a best-of-three AL Wild Card Series starting Tuesday.
The Mariners will play the winner of the Tigers-Guardians series in the American League Division Series, with Game 1 scheduled for Saturday at T-Mobile Park.
MLB won’t schedule times for the ALDS until after the Wild Card Series is complete.
On July 8, the Guardians trailed the Tigers by 151/2 games in the AL Central. Cleveland closed out the season with a 47-26 record to chase down the Tigers and complete a historic comeback, capped by Brayan Rocchio’s walkoff, three-run home run to beat the Texas Rangers in the 10th inning Sunday.
The Tigers lost at Boston, 4-3, on Sunday to lock in the No. 6 seed in the AL. On July 8, Detroit owned the best record in MLB at 59-34; since then, the Tigers are 28-41.
The Mariners went 4-2 against both the Tigers and Guardians this season. The Mariners, having secured their first AL West title in 24 years, have five days off to prepare for the ALDS.
“We want to win a World Series,” M’s catcher Cal Raleigh said Sunday afternoon. “I think the attitude in the room is, we’re very happy with where we’re at and achieving something we’ve never done before. But at the same time, we’re hungry. We still want more. The jobs not finished – (that) kind of mentality, because we’re not just happy to be here.”
Kershaw steals spotlight in finale
For what was a rather meaningless Sunday afternoon for both teams, Game 162 still featured several memorable moments.
The Dodgers defeated the Mariners, 6-1, to conclude the regular season and complete a sweep of a three-game series that carried very little significance for two teams playing mostly in cruise control as they simply tried to stay healthy and sharp for the upcoming playoffs.
Watching Clayton Kershaw, though, was pretty darn cool.
Kershaw, in the final regular-season start of his illustrious career, walked off the mound to a standing ovation from a sold-out crowd of 45,658 at T-Mobile Park.
Earlier this month, the 37-year-old Kershaw announced he was retiring at the end of this season, his 18th with the Dodgers.
Kershaw is a future first-ballot Hall of Famer – one of the greatest left-handed pitchers of all-time – and he was feted with the reception he deserved after striking out Eugenio Suárez for the first out of the sixth inning.
Kershaw stuck the baseball in his back pocket as a keepsake.
Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman then emerged from the dugout, surprising Kershaw at the mound with a hug and then making a call to the bullpen.
Kershaw took off his hat to acknowledge the standing ovation from the crowd.
Kershaw scattered four hits over 5 1/3 scoreless innings, with one walk and seven strikeouts.
About 10 minutes later, Shohei Ohtani got the many Dodgers fans in attendance on their feet again when he hammered an 0-2 fastball from Gabe Speier 412 feet out to center field.
It was Ohtani’s 55th home run of the season, passing his own Dodgers single-season record of 54 from 2024, prompting “MVP!” chants from Dodgers fans.
A separate “MVP!” chant had broken out earlier in the game when Raleigh stepped in to face Kershaw. Raleigh was 0 for 2 with a walk, but he singled in his final plate appearance off Landon Knack and then received a standing ovation when he was lifted for a pinch runner.
Raleigh finished the season with 60 home runs, becoming the first Mariners player to lead MLB in homers.
Bryce Miller pitched four innings for the Mariners, allowing two-run home runs to Hyeseong Kim and Freeman in back-to-back innings.
Miller, who missed half the season because of bone spurs in his pitching elbow, will likely be asked to move to the bullpen during the playoffs, and he said he’s willing to do that if that’s what the team needs.
“If I know it’s one inning, I’ll just go full launch, just let it rip,” he said.
Both teams had already secured their division titles before the series began, and their seedings for their league playoffs were largely locked in, too, which made the past three games mostly anti-climactic.
NOTES
• The Mariners finished with a 51-30 record at home this season.
• In their 81 home games, the Mariners drew a total of 2,537,817, averaging 31,331. That total figure is behind the 2024 total: 2,555,813.