Let’s not sugarcoat it: 76-86. That’s the final tally on the 50th season of Mariners baseball, and no one in that ballpark on Sunday was pretending otherwise.

The Mariners beat the Angels 7-3 in Game 162, splitting the four-game farewell series 2-2 and handing Los Angeles the first 100-loss season in franchise history — a 62-100 finish for a club that had been the only team in Major League Baseball never to lose 100 games. Somebody had to end the streak. It might as well be us.

But this game was never really about the standings, because the standings had been settled weeks ago. It was about the farewells.

Logan Gilbert, Eight Strikeouts in Four Innings

Logan Gilbert took the ball for the finale against his old battery mate Yusei Kikuchi (5.0 IP, 6 H, 3 R, 7 K for the ex-Mariner) and proceeded to deal: 4.0 IP, 0 hits, 0 runs, 1 walk, 8 strikeouts. Eight. In four innings. On 61 pitches.

And then he was gone — lifted after the fourth with the lead in hand and nothing left to prove this afternoon. He didn’t qualify for the win (four innings short of the mark) and finishes 12-11. But he did cross a threshold: he came into the day with 197 strikeouts, three shy of 200, and walked off with 205.

Which brings us to the question hanging over the entire offseason: was this the last time Logan Gilbert pitches in a Mariners uniform? He’s entering his fourth and final year of arbitration, free agency after 2027, and last spring’s extension talks went nowhere public. He’s one of the most logical offseason trade candidates in baseball. Trade him and the return shapes the whole rebuild; keep him and he’s the ace of a rotation carrying this team until the bats show up — whenever that is. Enjoy that argument all winter. It’ll be the only Mariners debate with a genuinely interesting answer.

The Kade Anderson Scare Has a Silver Lining

The best news of the weekend arrived in a diagnosis. Rookie left-hander Kade Anderson, the 22-year-old who dominated Double-A Arkansas (10-1, 1.06 ERA, 135 K in 93⅓ innings) before his August call-up, took a 103.8 mph Christian Moore line drive off his left forearm in the fourth inning Saturday and left with what the club called a bruised forearm.

Saturday was already Anderson’s last scheduled start — the Mariners are going nowhere this October — so the timing is as forgiving as these things get. He finished 3⅓ scoreless innings with four strikeouts before the exit, closing his rookie season at 2-2 with a 3.79 ERA, 35⅔ innings, and 32 strikeouts across seven starts.

“The beauty of the offseason is you get to take a look back,” Anderson said. Take the man at his word: a full winter of rest, and the most exciting young arm this organization has developed in years. You’ll take that, in a season like this, every single time.

Saturday’s Coda: The Old Guys’ Last Flourish

Don’t let the finale’s box score distract you from how this series actually peaked. Saturday’s 8-4 comeback was the last great night of the year: the Angels erased a 4-0 deficit with a four-run sixth, and then — in the bottom of the seventh — Taylor Ward pinch-hit a two-run single against his former team, and J.P. Crawford homered on the very next pitch.

It was Ward’s signature moment in a Mariners uniform, it was Crawford’s 14th homer — a 403-foot shot — and the rookies did the heavy lifting around them: Arroyo with three hits, Young scoring three times. Angels took the first two games of the series (6-4, 7-5); Seattle took the last two. Baseball’s version of agreeing to disagree.

Worth noting: both Ward and Crawford are free agents to be, and neither looks like a lock to return. Ward, acquired at the deadline, hasn’t hit a ball harder than Saturday’s 106.6 mph single since July 9 — the April hand injury may have something to do with it. Crawford slashed .220/.335/.352 in 115 games and no longer belongs at shortstop. Sunday may have been the last game for both in Seattle. Fitting, in a way, that they authored the last great moment together.

One Last “Holy Smokes”

Sunday was Celebration Day for Rick Rizzs — the placards, the standing ovations, the tributes woven through the broadcast. Forty-one years behind the mic. He never got to call a World Series game, and neither did Dave Niehaus before him. That sentence should haunt this organization every winter until it’s no longer true.

Rizzs goes into the Mariners Hall of Fame next year, only the second non-uniformed member alongside Niehaus. If you were one of the fans in the building Sunday, you witnessed the single genuine moment of this season. Treasure it accordingly.

The Honest Accounting

Here’s what 2026 was: the Mariners led the AL West on July 5th, then went 25-38 with the worst offense in baseball — 577 runs, shut out 15 times — one year after winning the division and taking the ALCS to Game 7. The first losing season since 2020 was sealed back on September 16th.

The manager’s future is the open question nobody will answer yet. The Gilbert question is the one that actually matters. The rookies — Arroyo, Young, Montes, Anderson — are the reason to believe any of this turns around instead of just restarting.

We split the final series, sent Rizzs off right, and watched the Angels trip over history. In a season with almost nothing to feel good about, that’s a decent last weekend.

The Gear Angle

The 2026 jerseys carry the 50th-season patch, and now the season is over — which means everything from this year is a timestamped artifact of the most cursed Mariners season in recent memory. Wear the wreckage proudly.

👉 Shop the Mariners Collection — Fanatics

The home white, size up for the kids. They’ll be wearing it when the window opens. Whenever that is.

Hot stove coverage, offseason mailbags, and the holiday gift guides start here next. The blog never goes to sleep just because the team did.