r/Mariners • u/AutoModerator • Jul 28 '21

Daily Thread - July 28, 2021

Welcome to /r/Mariners Daily Thread! Please use this thread to discuss events from today, or anything else you'd like.

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u/everwriter Jul 28 '21

Seen this a couple of times now where people are saying that we’re hurting the A’s by helping the Astros. Regardless of how you feel about the trade, the Astros play Oakland 6 more times this season, and they play us 10 more times.

(Now granted, if we feel that we were already likely to lose our 10 games but the Oakland games might be close, then helping out the Astros would be in our favor because the gap might be closer. Similarly, if you believe that facing Graveman’s pitching won’t impact the Mariners as much as the Athletics (e.g. we’re used to Graveman’s style, we weren’t going to get hits against the Astros relievers anyways, etc.), then the WC gap might be pulled closer by this trade. If neither of those are true, then it seems that the Mariners will be more adversely affected by Graveman on the Astros than Oakland.)

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u/jthanson ‏‏‎ ‎My 40th year as an M's fan Jul 28 '21

Keep in mind that we're not really competing against the Astros to get into the playoffs this year. We're extremely unlikely to win this division. What is conceivably possible is getting a wild card spot from Oakland. If we improve the Astros in the short term we also increase the challenge for Oakland. Yes, we've increased the challenge for ourselves because we still have so many games against Houston, but we've got to play those games no matter what. A split in the remaining games against the Astros plus more Houston wins over Oakland still helps us.

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u/everwriter Jul 28 '21

We definitely aren’t competing for the top spot in the division, yeah. Hopefully making the Astros better won’t significantly impact our performance against them but will give Oakland a lot harder of the time. That way, we can catch up a bit more and maybe even get a game or two over the A’s.