Whew, what a weekend.

The Mariners took two of three games from the Texas Rangers this weekend to lock down the season series against them before even reaching the end of June.

One of the most evenly matched series in recent memory, all three games needed extra frames to decide a winner, with the two teams splitting the first two to set up a rubber game on Sunday.

Both teams struggled with runners in scoring position for large portions of the weekend, but the Mariners were able to find a couple of timely hits in extra innings on both Friday and Sunday to come away with the series win.

Mitch Garver, whose status was unknown for the series as late as Friday afternoon, stepped up in a big way on Sunday, blasting a two-run homer into Globe Life Park’s second deck in the top of the 12th inning to give the Mariners a three-run lead that they would ultimately retain. Garver had a three-hit day against his former team and was responsible for the game even making it to extra innings, having driven in the team’s only run in the first nine innings.

Garver’s contributions over the weekend could be viewed as especially timely for him, given catching prospect Harry Ford’s addition to the taxi squad headed into the weekend. With Garver hitting well, the Mariners may be more inclined to stick with him rather than rush Ford up to the big league roster.

The Mariners’ series win closes out a 6-4 roadtrip that saw a couple of tiebreakers secured, no days off and plenty of weather obstacles in the form of rain in Minneapolis and extreme heat and wind in Chicago. Arriving at a climate-controlled environment in Arlington had to have been a welcome sight for the Mariners this weekend.

With the Astros also taking two of three from the Cubs at home this weekend, the Mariners remain 6.5 games behind first place in the division. However, the M’s gained some ground in the wild card race, now holding the American League’s final playoff spot by two games.

Mariners return to T-Mobile Park for a critical homestand

Following their eventful roadtrip, the Mariners are back in Seattle for a quick seven-game homestand against the Kansas City Royals and Pittsburgh Pirates.

Though these seven games look very winnable on paper, there is a lot of pressure on the Mariners to stack some wins this week. This is their final homestand prior to the All-Star Break and it will be followed by a rather difficult roadtrip to close out the first half, facing two of the American League’s top teams in the Detroit Tigers and New York Yankees.

The Mariners are sitting just three games over .500 and are going to want to improve on that before embarking on a challenging roadtrip with no days off. They will also face the AL’s other division leader, the Astros, coming out of the All-Star Break, so there will plenty of opportunity for the M’s to drop games if they don’t play well.

Building a larger cushion this week will be imperative, especially with a lot of big decisions for the roster coming up at the trade deadline. Fans who want to see the Mariners buy at the deadline are definitely going to want to see them put it together right now — how they perform in the coming days will very likely influence the front office’s upcoming decisions.

Second round of All-Star voting underway — Cal Raleigh looks to become AL’s starting catcher

Cal Raleigh is facing off with Toronto’s Alejandro Kirk for the starting catcher spot on the American League All-Star team.

Voting began today at 9 a.m. PT, and will continue for the next two days until Wednesday at 9 a.m. PT. Unlike the first round of voting, fans can only vote once a day per valid email address in the second round of voting. This will reset at midnight PT each day. A link to the ballot can be found right here.

In the first round of voting, Raleigh led American League catchers handily with 3,040,594 votes. By comparison, Kirk, the second-highest vote-getter, received only 1,210,173 votes.

All that said, the work is not over. The Mariners are going all in with their efforts to get Raleigh the starting spot. Tonight, the team’s entire lineup will walk up to the plate with an assortment of derrière-themed songs, inspired by Raleigh’s ‘Big Dumper’ nickname.

Regardless of the result of the All-Star voting, Raleigh will be a part of the All-Star Game festivities in Atlanta as a participant in the Home Run Derby.

Know your opponent: Kansas City Royals

As mentioned earlier, the Mariners will host the Royals for four games at T-Mobile Park starting tonight, looking to build on their quality roadtrip and expand their wild card lead.

For a couple of years now, the Royals have been a proverbial thorn in the side for the Mariners’ pitching. Since the beginning of the 2022 season, M’s pitching has a 4.81 ERA against the Royals — against the Majors as a whole, their ERA is 3.65 in that same timeframe.

Despite these struggles, which could at least partially be accounted for by Kauffman Stadium’s large outfield and the Royals’ strong ability to put the ball in play, the Mariners are 13-6 against the Royals since the start of 2022, and have seen the ball well with a .297 batting average. All that said, this is a new year and changed teams.

The Mariners have been searching for consistency in every facet of the game lately. Will they find it this week? Only time will tell.

This is Rolling Roof Rundown’s twice-weekly Mariners newsletter. You can follow James @rollingroofrundown.com on Bluesky and, if you haven’t already, subscribe to the newsletter for more news and commentary. Rolling Roof Rundown is now on Instagram and Threads as well.