3 Up, 3 Down: The Best and Worst Performances From Mariners’ Sweep of Rangers

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3 Up, 3 Down: The Best and Worst Performances From Mariners’ Sweep of Rangers

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What a difference a week makes. Exactly seven days removed from being swept by the Giants and losing Victor Robles in the process, the Mariners wrapped up a 5-1 homestand on Sunday with a sweep-clinching, 3-1 victory over the division-rival Rangers. It was a big series across the board for Seattle, which makes picking the three best performances from it, as well as identifying the “worst” ones, quite difficult, but let’s take a crack at it.

3 UP

Cal Raleigh

Baseball fans of all kinds have probably heard the term “torpedo bat” uttered a billion times over the last two or so weeks. It was certainly the talk of the town in Seattle this weekend as Raleigh began swinging a torpedo bat of his own, exclusively from the left side, and in his first at-bat with it, he smashed a game-winning, two-run home run in the bottom of the eighth inning of Friday’s 5-3 Mariners victory. That proved to only be the beginning of an incredible series for Seattle’s star catcher, who launched two more dingers over the course of the series and added a double on top of it — all with the torpedo bat. Seems likely he won’t be going away from it any time soon.

Bryan Woo

Woo’s start on Saturday kicked off in disastrous fashion, leading with a four-pitch walk, two singles and a run scored, and another “single” that landed in between Julio Rodríguez and Luke Raley after the two outfielders miscommunicated. The bases were loaded, not a single out had been recorded, and Woo’s pitch count had already reached double digits — a surefire recipe for the game to quickly get out of hand. It eventually did, but not for the Mariners as Woo induced a weak flyout off the bat of Joc Pederson and struck out Jake Burger and Josh Jung to end the threat. He cruised from that point forward, hurling six scoreless frames to give the majority of Seattle’s bullpen a much-needed night off, striking out seven with the help of some truly disgusting four-seam fastballs and sinkers.

Julio Rodríguez

After going 0-for-4 on Friday, Rodríguez kicked off Saturday’s scoring barrage with an RBI triple, driving an 0-1 curveball on the inner third of the plate to the base of the wall in left-center field. He had two other hard-hit balls on the night that unfortunately resulted in outs, but of course, as baseball tends to work out sometimes, the one ball he hit weakly turned into an infield single. The next day, Rodríguez tallied another pair of hits off Rangers starter Nathan Eovaldi, the most notable coming on a fastball on the outside corner of the plate that he violently slapped into right field at an exit velocity of 105.6 miles per hour. Overall, he showed encouraging process with the bat as he continues to put together a solid opening month.

Honorable mentions: Jorge Polanco, Logan Gilbert, Miles Mastrobuoni, Rowdy Tellez

3 DOWN

Randy Arozarena

Arozarena added a couple more walks and an RBI on a hit-by-pitch to his season totals, but he was the only Mariner to start all three games of the series and not record a hit.

Trent Thornton

Dan Wilson and the Mariners clearly believe in Thornton and continue to use him in high-leverage situations here in the early part of the season, but 50 percent of the flyballs he’s allowed so far have resulted in home runs, including a game-tying, two-run blast in the sixth of Friday night’s game. That’s now three home runs surrendered by Thornton in 7.2 innings pitched.

Gregory Santos

Given the ball in the ninth inning of a 9-1 game, Santos had his third rocky appearance in a row. He surrendered a run on three hard-hit balls and only generated one whiff on 16 pitches. On a somewhat related note, Santos is still looking for his first strikeout of the season despite appearing in seven games already.