Sunday's finale at Nationals Park has a 1:35 PM ET first pitch, and both clubs walk in within a game of .500 — Seattle at 36-34, Washington at 35-34. The Mariners are reeling, the Nats are scoring in bunches, and the matinee slot is the last chance for either side to take something out of the weekend. The Mariners have lost 3 of their last 5 and just got bullied in Baltimore, dropping the last two by a combined 14-7 and getting outscored 19-runs-to-not-enough across their last 3 games. Washington has been the opposite show — 3 wins in the last 5, including a 10-11 slugfest loss to the Giants that still featured 10 Nats runs. If you came for pitching dominance, you came to the wrong matinee. The bigger Seattle story is the infirmary. Cal Raleigh (oblique) is finally close — he's been raking on a rehab assignment at Triple-A Tacoma and is tracking toward a return around the Mariners' next homestand, which means he almost certainly is NOT walking through that door in D.C. on Sunday. J.P. Crawford is still waiting on CT scan results on his hand, Brendan Donovan is weeks away from baseball activity after a PRP shot, and reliever Matt Brash just got shipped back to Seattle for further evaluation on his lat. That is a lot of names not in uniform for a team that suddenly can't keep the ball in the yard. Washington's rotation is held together with duct tape — Jake Irvin remains shut down from throwing, Trevor Williams and DJ Herz are still working back, and Josiah Gray is only just resuming a throwing program. The lineup, though, is doing the heavy lifting. The Nats just hung 6 on Arizona, 6 on the Giants, and 10 more on San Francisco in a wild loss. For a Seattle staff that's coughed up 19 runs over its last 3, that is the matchup that should worry every Mariners fan tuning in. Saturday's series-opener-and-Saturday results will obviously color how this finale feels, but the shape of the game is clear before anyone throws a pitch: Washington wants to keep slugging, Seattle needs its starter to do what the Baltimore staff couldn't and give them length. With Raleigh still in Tacoma and Crawford still in scan-results limbo, the Mariners are asking a lot from a depleted group on the road. Get-away-day matinees with travel waiting on the other side are usually a trap, and this one has the makings of one for Seattle.