Series Preview: Seattle Mariners at Los Angeles Angels

Floating on a river, gazing at the heavens, you’re liable to see neither the hearts of the Anaheim Angels nor the spirits of the Seattle Mariners. Sacramento offered two of the season’s most gutting, but representative losses, and Seattle’s California carousel of hell continues in Disneyland. They’ll take on the team owned no longer by Arte Moreno for the first time in more than two decades.

The Angels are a moribund bunch, but they are in many ways what Seattle would look like if the M’s couldn’t hit. Like, really couldn’t hit. They are an atrocious defensive team (hark, the vantablack kettle) that strikes out a boatload, undermining what’s actually a decent pitching staff. Deadline deals chipped away at that pitching staff and lineup, moving Jo Adell and Jose Soriano among others. While they dealt some arms away from their bullpen, flamethrower Ben Joyce is healthy after missing half the year and working his way into high leverage.

Anaheim has a couple familiar faces up top in Zach Neto and Mike Trout, but not many. They’ve taken the back half of the year to wisely audition several young players, finding some promise in folks like Wade Meckler but still waiting on more elsewhere. Moises Ballesteros was a highly regarded prospect with the Cubs but has not found his swing yet since coming over in return for reliever Ryan Zeferjahn. There’s a few post-hype hopes here as well in Josh Lowe and Jose Siri, but hope has been their predominant currency.

From a previous series preview:

Last year, the Angels moved Reid Detmers to the bullpen and he wound up seeing some high leverage work by the end of the season. Perhaps it was out of frustration with his slow development path despite possessing above average stuff, but that experiment lasted one season because a talented starter — even an inconsistent one like Detmers — is always going to be more valuable than a back-end reliever. If there’s one thing that he’ll carry forward from his time in the ‘pen, it’s a more aggressive approach that leans heavily on his two fantastic breaking balls to put batters away.

Detmers has thrived in his return to the rotation this year, accumulating a career-high 4.4 fWAR with career-best marks in ERA and FIP. His strikeout rate is right in line with his career norms but the big reason he’s taken a big step forward is because he’s cut his walk rate by nearly three points and has dramatically reduced the amount of hard contact he has allowed. The last time he faced the Mariners, way back in early April, he held them scoreless over 6.2 innings with four strikeouts.

From a previous series preview:

Ryan Johnson is a perfect encapsulation of everything wrong with the Angels current player development philosophy. He was drafted in the second round in 2024 after dominating in college ball at Dallas Baptist. He made the Opening Day roster in 2025 as a reliever, skipping the minor leagues entirely. After a month and a half and a 7.36 ERA, the Angels pulled the plug and sent him to High-A to continue his development as a starter. He made 12 starts in the minors and looked really good. Fast forward a year and Johnson had a solid, but not outstanding, spring training and Los Angeles opted to start the season with Johnson on the big league roster again. After allowing six runs in his first start of the year, the Angels sent him back to the minors for a few months before recalling him for good in mid June. It’s really too bad because Johnson has a really intriguing profile, and obviously has some raw talent, but the games the Angels have played with his development pathway have really hurt his ability to grow.

Since the beginning of August, Johnson has enjoyed some solid results on the mound — he’s running a 2.11 ERA over his last seven starts — but his peripherals are just as bad as ever — his FIP is up at 5.43 during this stretch.

Yusei Kikuchi missed nearly four months of the season with a shoulder injury. He returned to the majors towards the end of August and resumed his brand of effectively wild pitching. After a slight dip in velocity last year, his heater is back to averaging close to 96 mph. It’s the eighth hardest four-seamer from the left side among all starting pitchers this year. He continues to mix in a hard slider and a curveball as his primary secondary pitches, but he’s replaced his changeup with a true splitter and added a cutter this season. The split has been an excellent pitch but the cutter has been hit pretty hard.

Academically, baseball continues elsewhere. Houston hosts Kansas City, because other teams get really mad if you flake on games you committed to a year ago that you never really thought would materialize until it’s this week. Texas hosts the Red Sox, the winner gets to keep the red, blue, and white color scheme for the rest of the year, the other has to wear a city connect of the opponent’s choosing.

The White Sox face the Guardians and the Cubs take on Atlanta if you’d like to prioritize baseball from clubs who might respect your time better the rest of this year.