There's a certain know-it-when-you-see-it moment when a baseball team goes from underperforming to checked out, from disappointing to joylessly headed nowhere. The Seattle Mariners seem to have reached that point. Their 22-0 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers on Tuesday, Aug. 18 had it all: Managerial malfeasance, an embarrassing gaffe by a superstar and, in the end, an utter lack of fight that belies the fact the Mariners are actually in the playoff hunt. Let's be clear: That doesn't mean they're a good team. The Mariners are 59-67, have been outscored by 45 runs and have a 60-homer superstar batting .157 — nearly 50 points worse than the lowest-qualified hitter in the major leagues. In any other year, that would typically invite a housecleaning at the trade deadline and perhaps a few rolling heads in management.
In the American League in the year 2026, however, it gets you just four games out of first in the West and three games out of the wild card. Yet Seattle's fortuitous positioning can't wash away how dismal this season has been, particularly since expectations were sky-high after the Mariners came within eight outs of their first World Series appearance ever in 2025. That Game 7 loss — courtesy of George Springer's historic home run — would not be possible had Mariners manager Dan Wilson not pushed virtually every wrong button in the pivotal seventh inning. And 2026 has been one hell of a hangover. The Mariners' location in the Pacific Northwest makes them the game's best-kept secret when things are going well. It can also serve to camouflage disappointments. But you can't hide from 22-0. The remarkable thing? It was just a 1-0 game going into the bottom of the fifth. That's when Mariners starter Bryce Miller got peppered — single-walk-single-walk-sacrifice fly — with a one-out rally. Even then, it was just 3-0. Lefty reliever Josh Simpson was warming in the bullpen. Christian Yelich was striding to the plate. Wilson stuck with Miller, not unlike sticking with Eduard Bazardo to face Springer all those months ago in Toronto. Like Springer, Yelich crushed a three-run homer. And then Wilson lifted Miller once again after the fact. But it was game over at that point.
Christian Yelich doubles the Brewers lead with one swing 💪 pic.twitter.com/OhMN1E97bW — MLB (@MLB) August 19, 2026 The ignominy was just beginning, though, reaching a crescendo when position player Leo Rivas was peppered for nine hits and nine runs in the bottom of the eighth. Yet only seven were earned runs, because franchise center fielder Julio Rodriguez lost track of the outs, tossed the ball into the stands and two more runs scored. Hey, brain farts happen. But combine that with all that's gone wrong with the squad — this was the Mariners' eighth loss in 11 games — and it's a massive spotlight on a bad team. Up 22, the Brewers saw fit to throw their own position player on the mound — catcher Gary Sanchez — and still, the Mariners couldn't push across a run. So they joined the 2004 Yankees and 1975 Pirates for the worst shutout loss since 1888. Nonetheless, they'll wake up Wednesday four games behind Houston in the West. The division is so bad that the Mariners' odds of winning it are 23.1%, per FanGraphs, compared to their 7.4% chance to snag the final wild card, which is just three games out of their reach. But the Mariners would have to leapfrog six teams, not two, to claim the final wild card. That's just not happening. Bad seasons happen, certainly. But this one seems like a continuation of all that went wrong when the Mariners held that 3-2 ALCS lead, only to go home empty-handed. It seems a lot likelier there will be consequences for this failure. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: The Mariners have been bad all year. Losing 22-0 is an embarrassment | Opinion