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An MLB postseason already rife with drama, and surging viewership, is set for another major chapter Monday night.
The Mariners and Blue Jays will square off in the seventh and deciding game of the American League Championship Series. The winner will face the Dodgers, the National League pennant winners, in the World Series starting Friday, but before that happens, Seattle and Toronto will play one of the most important games in the history of both franchises.
That’s certainly the case for the Mariners. The only MLB club to never reach the World Series, Seattle is attempting to break through an often-difficult history that saw three ALCS losses between 1995 and 2001, and then a 21-year absence from the postseason that set a record for the longest playoff drought among the four major U.S. men’s pro sports leagues.
The Blue Jays, which entered MLB in 1977 with the Mariners as an expansion franchise, has its own frustrations to overcome. After back-to-back titles in 1992 and 1993, Toronto has not been back to the World Series since, and it has reached the postseason only six times in the 32 years since that last championship, including ALCS losses in 2015 and 2016.
“I was born ready. I was born ready. And I want it all for this city,” Blue Jays star first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr. said on Sportsnet after helping force Game 7 with a home run Sunday night.
The son of Baseball Hall of Famer Vladimir Guerrero Sr., the younger Guerrero has reached another level this month, hitting .462 in the playoffs and helping affirm the $500 million contract extension he signed with the Blue Jays in April. The pact is the third-largest player deal in MLB history, trailing only those for Shohei Ohtani and Juan Soto.
Viewership Lift
The deciding game between the Mariners and Blue Jays will likely be a boon for Fox, which is among the MLB rights holders enjoying steady lifts in viewership for the MLB postseason, and not just because of Nielsen’s new Big Data + Panel measurement process.
The wild-card round on ESPN set a record in the four-year history of the current format, while the overall audience for the division round rose 17% to a 14-year high. Initial viewership in the U.S. for the ALCS was tracking more than 30% ahead of last year’s Guardians-Yankees matchup, shown on TNT Sports.
Tonight’s ALCS Game 7, meanwhile, marks the sixth series of the 2025 postseason to go the full length, following three such elimination games in the wild-card round and two more in the division series. That overall number is a league record, surpassing the five such games played in 2012 and again in 2020.
