Mariners into ALDS after improbable comeback completes sweep of Blue Jays

TORONTO — Fueled by an improbably comeback, the Seattle Mariners are into the American League Division Series with a 10-9 Game 2 win on Saturday to sweep the Toronto Blue Jays in their wild-card series.

The Mariners were down 8-1 in the bottom of the fifth inning before scoring four runs in the sixth, four in the eighth and one in the top of the ninth to get the victory. It's the Mariners' fourth postseason series win in franchise history; they also won the ALDS in 1995, 2000, and 2001.

Meanwhile, after battling the past month to host an American League Wild Card series inside their typically raucous ballpark, the Blue Jays and their fans were largely held silent the past two days as their season abruptly came to an end against the Mariners.

Expectations had been high for Toronto to go on a long playoff run. They were based largely on the team's offensive success in the final weeks of the regular season. After the Blue Jays went 13-14 across the month of August, they rallied through the rest of the schedule.

Toronto was 22-11 in its final 33 games, and even took five of the six games that immediately preceded the postseason. A win at Baltimore last Monday clinched the AL's top Wild Card spot and home-field advantage in the round for Toronto.

These playoff games were the first held at Rogers Centre since 2016, when the Blue Jays lost in five games to Cleveland in the American League Championship Series. Cleveland went on to lose that World Series to the Chicago Cubs.

Toronto did appear in the 2020 Wild Card series, also getting eliminated in two games. The higher-seeded Tampa Bay Rays hosted that series, which happened during a stretch of COVID-impacted seasons that had the Blue Jays playing home games at their spring