Our flurry of October baseball was full of hope and glory and heartbreak and history. But in the end the Seattle Mariners are who we thought they were. They were in fact the team we’ve seen them to be over and over again through the regular season. They were unable to escape themselves.

Going into their own postseason the Seattle Sounders have to answer the same question of themselves; are they the sum of their mistakes and deeply regretting what could have been, or are they a Voltron assembled from many strengths?

It’s eerie the parallels that Seattle’s favorite teams have experienced in 2025. In the same way Mariners had a propensity to leave men on base to end an inning, and especially loading up the bases to do nothing with it, Sounders have far too many times been inexplicably unable to secure the bag. And through the inconsistency they have still reached a number of franchise milestones including being the first MLS team to win every possible trophy.

Over a full five games in the American League Division Series and then a further seven games in the AL Championship Series, the Mariners got as close to the World Series as they...