SEATTLE – The Mariners clinched at least the No. 2 seed in the American League playoffs before the first pitch was thrown at T-Mobile Park on Thursday night.
Less than hour before they took the field to play the Colorado Rockies, the Mariners watched in the clubhouse as the Tigers held on for a 4-2 victory over the Guardians, salvaging one win in the three-game series and avoiding a sweep at Progressive Field.
With a top-two seed clinched, the Mariners will have a bye through the wild-card round of the playoffs, meaning they will have five days off before opening the American League Division Series on Oct. 4 in Seattle.
With both Detroit and Cleveland now holding 86-73 records in the back-and-forth battle for the American League Central with three games left in their season, it meant that neither team could finish with a better record than the Mariners.
Even if Seattle had lost its final four games and one of the two teams won their final three games, they would finish with an identical record to the Mariners. Seattle holds the tiebreaker over both by virtue of winning the respective season series.
As the No. 2 seed, the Mariners will play the winner of the wild-card series between the AL Central winner and the third wild-card spot. Those two spots will got some combination of the Tigers, Guardians and Astros.
The Toronto Blue Jays entered Thursday night one game ahead of the Mariners for the top seed in the American League, but Toronto owns the tiebreaker if the teams finish with identical records.