Seattle Mariners Chase History Again: Can 2025 Team Succeed Where 2001 Failed?

Maybe there are no ghosts that linger for the Seattle Mariners from 2001, but there certainly are some scars.

Mention the best regular seasons in major league history and the 116-win Mariners from 2001 enter the conversation. Compile some of the all-time playoff busts, and the same club comes to mind.

Nobody knows the highs and lows more than Dan Wilson, a catcher on the 2001 Mariners, who is the manager of the franchise’s current iteration.

Wilson played 123 games for that 116-win club, batting .265 with 10 home runs and 42 RBIs. A better indicator of what Wilson meant for that team was the pitching staff’s combined 3.54 ERA. No major league team was better that season.

Opponents also hit a league-low .236 against Seattle that season. The pitchers’ walks/hits per nine innings were at an MLB-best 1.20.

Just how wild was that 2001 summer in the Pacific Northwest? The Mariners reached 100 wins on Sept. 5, with a full month still remaining on the schedule. Heading into MLB play Friday, no team had more than 89 wins.

That included the Los Angeles Dodgers, who headed into the weekend with 82 wins. The 2001 Mariners were discussed as a goal for the 2025 Dodgers after they compiled a super roster with additions like left-handers Blake Snell and Tanner Scott, along with right-hander Kirby Yates and outfielder Michael Conforto.

The Dodgers’ season has been yet another example of the 2001 Mariners setting up future teams to fail. Chase that double-digit win mark at your own peril.

Except the best regular-season record is not the ultimate prize. This isn’t European football.

Since 1987, an MLB club has won the World Series five times after earning less than 90 wins in the regular season. The 2006 St. Louis Cardinals won a title in 2006 with just 83 wins. They walked away with the trophy after finishing just five games over .500.

The Mariners have come within two games of a trip to the World Series two times in their history. Neither of those seasons was 2001, when they won just one game in the American League Championship Series against the New York Yankees before the weight of all those regular-season wins came crashing all around them.

While pitching was the star in Seattle that summer, it was supposed to be the same this year. Starters Logan Gilbert, George Kirby, Luis Castillo, Bryce Miller and Bryan Woo rolled into the season as one of the top starting rotations, even if Kirby was about to miss nearly two months with a shoulder injury.

Except the pitching staff has entered the weekend with a 3.95 ERA that was exactly in the middle of the pack in the major leagues. The 4.12 ERA from the starters was 17th in the majors.

Instead, the much-maligned offense, at the start of the season, was leading the way with 927 runs scored entering the weekend, tops in baseball. Nobody had a better on-base percentage than Seattle’s .360 mark.

Seattle further bolstered the offense with deadline-week trades for first baseman Josh Naylor and third baseman Eugenio Suárez. Since the deadline passed, the Mariners were 18-3 in home games heading into Saturday’s play. They were 22-16 since the start of August overall.

And now the magic is starting to happen. On Wednesday against the Cardinals, Seattle received a game-ending home run from Leo Rivas in the 13th inning. On Thursday against the Los Angeles Angels, it was a game-ending sacrifice fly from Harry Ford. On Friday, Mitch Garver hit a go-ahead home run in the seventh against the Angels.

Rivas has just 39 games played this season and three career home runs. Ford was playing in his fourth career game when he played the role of hero. The fly ball was his first career RBI.

Ford also moved the Mariners into a first-place tie with the Houston Astros in the American League West. Garver’s home run kept Seattle tied entering Saturday.

Seattle is now less than a week away from a three-game showdown series at Houston between a pair of teams that have each won five games against each other.

So while the chance at matching the franchise’s best regular season is long gone, the current club has a chance to do what no Seattle major league club has done. There are some talented rosters heading toward the postseason, but the 2025 season has not yet spit out a clear-cut favorite for the title.

“That’s what we’re playing for,” Wilson told reporters this week. “And that’s what this time of year is all about. We have a lot of work to do. We’ve still got a lot of games left. But it does feel like we’re moving in the right direction.”