It’s typically disingenuous to say any one day defines a season, particularly when that season lasts for 162 games.
And maybe Sunday won’t define the Seattle Mariners’ 2018. After all, they aren’t mathematically eliminated from playing in their first MLB playoff game since the 2001 season just yet.
They just, no other way to put it, needed to win this four-game series against the Oakland Athletics, the club directly in front of them, towering in their way of ending the longest active playoff drought in North American professional sports.
The Mariners were on the cusp of their third win in four games on Sunday, with Felix Hernandez rolling through five innings, until the A’s used a sadistic sixth inning to pull away.