TORONTO – The proper selection of the T-shirt, whether it’s for pregame work or postgame interviews, is made with intent out of superstition, personal promotion and purposeful messaging. They had “Pho Kit” shirts made to match a mindset needed to push their way into the postseason and winning the American League West – a story for another day in the playoffs.
But a new shirt has become noticeable in the 2025 playoffs as the Mariners advanced from the American League Division Series in a five-game thriller into the American League Championship Series, often worn by Cal Raleigh.
It’s simple in its design and message. Across the chest of the navy shirt, in Mariners’ uniform font, it reads: “Job’s Not Finished.”
The blunt reminder that this group is playing for something more than their predecessors of past playoffs is useful, but not necessarily needed. Their singular focus won’t fade with success.
On Monday, they moved another game closer to completing that job and achieving something that no Mariners team has done in the 48 years of the franchise’s existence.
With their 10-3 pasting of the Blue Jays, leaving a sell-out crowd at the Rogers Centre grumbling often, booing intermittently and exiting early, the Mariners took a 2-0 lead in the ALCS, moving closer to appearing in their first World Series in franchise history.
In 1995, the Mariners held a 2-1 lead over Cleveland, dropping the next three games. In 2000, they went into Game 6 of the ALCS down 3-2 in the series to the Yankees and lost.
This team just needs to find a way to win two more times over the next five games for a chance to play on baseball’s biggest stage. They return home to Seattle with three straight days of games scheduled at T-Mobile Park, starting on Wednesday evening.
Can you imagine the celebration of clinching a pennant in Seattle? But …
“Job’s not finished.”
“Yeah, it’s a simple message,” Raleigh said. “With the guys here, we’re not done. We’re so hungry. We’re going to just keep our head down because it’s still gonna be a tough series. We’ve still got a lot of work to do and we don’t want to get satisfied.”
They did the work to finish this series in front of their own fans, rolling into Canada and taking the first two games against a team that was 54-27 at home in the regular season and 2-0 in the playoffs, outscoring the Yankees 23-8 in those two wins.
The numbers can provide some optimism for even the most fatalistic of Mariners fans.
Per MLB, there have been 93 teams that have taken a 2-0 lead in a best-of-seven postseason series with 78 of them going on to win the series, including 33 of 38 in the league championship series.
There have been 30 teams to take a 2-0 lead by winning their first two games on the road, similar to the Mariners, with 26 of them winning the series, including 14 of 15 times in the league championship series.
It all points to success ahead for Seattle, but.
“Job’s not finished.”
“You can’t let up,” said Logan Gilbert. “Two wins here in Toronto. That’s huge, but we’re a long ways away from the World Series. I think we have to approach it that way. We love playing in Seattle in front of our fans, and having three there. I think it’s going to be huge, but it’s not like we’re there yet. We have two more big ones to get.”
If they “stole” Game 1 by getting six innings of outstanding starting pitching from Bryce Miller working on three days rest and timely hits from Raleigh and Jorge Polanco, they owned the outcome of Game 2 from the first inning.
Julio Rodríguez smacked a three-run homer in the top of the first off rookie starter Trey Yesavage to set an early tone.
The early runs were needed. Gilbert, who had thrown 33 pitches in the Game 5 victory on Friday, looked like a pitcher who was asked to do more than usual. The lanky right-hander struggled didn’t have the same crispness or command on his off-speed pitches and struggled to keep them on the edges of the strike zone. He either missed badly or missed down the middle.
“I definitely have more respect for our bullpen than ever before, because they take the ball every other day for six months, and that’s not easy to do,” Gilbert said.
The three-run lead provided by Rodriguez was erased quickly with the Blue Jays taking advantage of a Josh Naylor error to pick up two runs in the first inning and another in the second inning to tie the game.
Gilbert made it just three innings, allowing three runs (two earned) on five hits with a walk and two strikeouts. He gutted his way through the outing, limiting damage as best he could before giving way to the bullpen.
The Mariners broke it open in the fifth inning,
With the score still tied at 3-3, Randy Arozarena led off the top of the fifth with a bouncing ball up the middle. Blue Jays shortstop Andres Gimenez gloved the ball and tried to make spinning throw to first to get Arozarena. Instead, the throw went wayward and got Eugenio Suarez, who was sitting on the dugout steps, in the back off a bounce.
Arozarena was awarded second base by the umpire crew, bringing Raleigh to the plate.
Blue Jays manager John Schneider, who mentioned that he thought about intentionally walking the Mariners slugging catcher every time he came to the plate, gave in to the urge and sent Raleigh to first base on a free pass.
Schneider then called on hard-throwing reliever Louis Varland to face Rodríguez. The move worked initially as Varland struck out Rodriguez swinging on a 98-mph fastball for the first out of the inning.
But when Varland tried to rip a similar 98-mph fastball past Polanco on a 1-1 count, he regretted it almost immediately. With a shorter swing and simpler approach than Rodríguez, Polanco, who was hitting left-handed, was ready for the heater. He sent a line drive to right-center that just got over the elevated wall for this third home run of the postseason. With a single later in the game, Polanco has tallied eight hits this postseason with six of them driving in runs.
“I’m always looking for the fastball,” he said. “You have to be ready to hit the fastball always.”
Teams are 26-0 in the postseason, when hitting two homers of three runs or more.
The Mariners tacked on another run in the sixth. Pinch-hitter Mitch Garver smacked a fly ball off the wall in left-center for a leadoff triple. Pinch runner Leo Rivas later scored on J.P. Crawford’s single to left-center.
Seattle kept pouring it on with Josh Naylor adding a two-run homer in the seventh.
In what became a bullpen outing for the Mariners, Eduard Bazardo provided two scoreless frames in relief of Gilbert. He stymied any offensive momentum that had been built by the Blue Jays in the first two innings. When the Mariners grabbed a sizable lead, it allowed manager Dan Wilson to turn to some of his lesser-used relievers, giving his leverage arms like Andres Muñoz, Gabe Speier and Matt Brash the night off. Carlos Vargas and Emerson Hancock pitched two scoreless innings each to close out the win.
As they packed for a night flight back home and a much-needed day off on Tuesday, they wouldn’t allow themselves to think about what it would be like to make it to the World Series. Why? The job’s not finished.
“I don’t really like looking too ahead,” Naylor said. “I like taking care of the day, and if we win, awesome; if we lose, take those lessons and learn from it and then move forward to the next game.”