Divish: Mariners now stand alone — as only MLB team never to reach World Series
From Ryan Divish at the Seattle Times on October 15, 2019:
The outcome seemed certain after a seven-run first inning and then became a little less so midway through the game, but it became official late Tuesday evening when closer Daniel Hudson secured the final out of the Washington Nationals’ 7-4 victory over the Cardinals at Nationals Park.
As Nationals players raucously celebrated their dominant National League Championship Series sweep of the St. Louis, the franchise failures of the Seattle Mariners gained a new level of ignominy even though their 2019 season ended weeks ago.
With the Nationals headed to the World Series for the first time in franchise’s 39-year history, including their time when they were the Montreal Expos, the Mariners now stand alone in perpetual failure as the only active organization in Major League Baseball to have never appeared in a World Series.
The Expos were founded in 1969 and made the playoffs just once, in 1981, losing in the NLCS to the Dodgers. MLB relocated the Expos to Washington, D.C., for the 2005 season and ran the organization until Ted Lerner purchased the team midway through 2006. Under Lerner’s ownership, the Nationals made the postseason five times since 2012 but never won a postseason series until this year. By comparison, Seattle had just three winning seasons in that same eight-year span.
Read the full article here: https://www.seattletimes.com/sports/mariners/mariners-now-stand-alone-as-only-mlb-team-never-to-reach-world-series/
Originally published: October 15, 2019. Last Updated: October 15, 2019.