All Yelling, No Winning: Mariners Fall to Caminero-Led Rays 6-5, Continue Awful Rut
TAMPA, Fla. — Another day, another frustrating loss for the Seattle Mariners. Junior Caminero drove in two-thirds of all Tampa’s runs on Tuesday to send the Mariners to a 6-5 defeat, but as so often happens with this ballclub, half of those RBIs were due to a fatal flaw in positioning on one key play.
But there was certainly a lot more at fault than just one play, as the bullpen struggled to keep the Mariners on top and the offense once again left runners hanging in scoring position—especially Cal Raleigh, who suffered two big outs with lots of men on despite getting his 51st home run of the year earlier in the contest.
Fastballer Fight
Tuesday’s game offered a prime example of how two different approaches fare against fastball-heavy pitchers, as the Mariners put Bryan Woo on the bump while the Rays went to Drew Rasmussen. The simplest way of explaining the two approaches is complexity versus simplicity.
Baseball, as Yogi Berra famously observed, is 90 percent mental (while the other half is physical). The worst thing you can do is overthink, especially at the plate. The Tampa Bay Rays adopted a startlingly simple strategy against Bryan Woo: sit on fastballs over the middle, be patient on the other stuff.
This approach worked very well in the first inning for the Rays, who benefited from some uncharacteristic lack of control from Woo. When a fastball pitcher is missing on a lot of his stuff, this makes a center-hunt approach even more beneficial, as the hitters just wait for something easy to hit out over the plate.
With Yandy Díaz on first from a walk and a full count to Brandon Lowe, Woo left a sinker right in the middle of the plate, and the ball ended up rolling to the right field wall and putting runners on first and second. With the infield playing inwards in hopes of preventing the lead runner from getting in, Junior Caminero seared a grooved 2-1 sinker into left field. An RBI fielder’s choice brought the Rays lead to 2-0, but Woo got out of the inning after that.
Jorge Polanco in the top of the second was the first Mariner to swing on a 2-1 or 3-1 middle-middle strike, finding the outfield for Seattle’s first hit.
The bottom of the second, however, showed why patience is a virtue (despite Seattle’s oftentimes overuse of it), as the Rays’ hitters swung at the first two pitches and hit into two straight outs, with Woo settling back into the swing of things.
Dan Wilson Tossed in Third
It’s pretty rare you see the soft-spoken Dan Wilson given the hook from an umpire, but that’s exactly what happened after the M’s got the business end of some bad strike calls while the team trailed by two. Perhaps it was very fitting that this was a game attended by the legendary Lou Piniella, though Wilson kept his characteristic cool (very much unlike Sweet Lou).
With a 1-1 count to J.P. Crawford in the top of the third, Rasmussen threw a cutter about three inches above the strike zone. Rays catcher Hunter Feduccia did an incredible framing job to steal the strike, and Crawford grounded out on the next pitch.
Next up was Cole Young, who took a first-pitch strike even further above the top of the zone. Almost immediately, the Mariners dugout—frustrated with a road trip rut and certainly not amused by missed calls—started chirping at home plate umpire Manny Gonzalez. A few seconds of this elapsed before Gonzalez motioned to the dugout and tossed someone, but it was unclear who that someone was.
Wilson exited the dugout and went to ask who the mystery ejected Mariner was. Gonzalez told him he didn’t know and that he only motioned to “the guy who was yelling.” Wilson informed Gonzalez that more than one Mariner had been chirping, but the way he did so sent him to the clubhouse.
“Well, we were all yelling!”
Gonzalez immediately gave him the hook, just the second ejection in Dan Wilson’s managerial career. Wilson’s eyes furrowed and the words “come on, why?” escaped his lips. Gonzalez shrugged his shoulders and informed Wilson he couldn’t argue balls and strikes.
It turned out that the previously ejected Mariner was right fielder Dominic Canzone, so Luke Raley came in to replace him.
Three Solo Blasts
It turns out that the very first time the Mariners hit three home runs in an inning was Tuesday, as Seattle took their first lead of the series on three solo shots from the top of the order.
The man who got it started was a leadoff smash by Raleigh, who battled Rasmussen for eight pitches before blasting an elevated fastball over the right field wall for his 51st home run of the season. Julio Rodríguez launched the first pitch he saw for a homer of his own and made it back-to-back, and two outs later, Polanco scorched the third run of the game for the M’s.
Seattle Slips in Sixth
Caminero led off the bottom of the sixth and turned on an inside fastball from Woo, using his elite bat speed to put an incredible piece of hitting on a ball that wasn’t very easy to square up. The ball soared over the left field wall for a game-tying home run.
With Woo on 84 pitches, acting manager Manny Acta went to Caleb Ferguson from the bullpen. This was something of an odd decision, partly because Caminero’s home run was very much a matter of Caminero being good and not Woo being bad—but also because Ferguson is in the middle of quite the rough stretch. In his previous six outings, the former Pirate had accumulated a 9.64 ERA.
That ignominious stretch continued on Tuesday evening, as Josh Lowe singled and Ferguson hit Jake Mangum with a pitch before giving up a walk to Christopher Morel to load the bases with nobody out.
Eduard Bazardo came on in relief and shut the Rays down after that, with the Rays’ only run that inning coming on a sacrifice fly by Tristan Gray, after which the inning ended on an unassisted double play by Josh Naylor. But the M’s had a deficit once more going into the seventh.
Cole Young’s Professional Game
You could tell me Young has been in the league for five years and I’d believe you nine times out of 10. No matter what happens in the game, he keeps his cool, keeps a good approach, and knows what he needs to do.
In the bottom of the third, Young helped keep the game close, snagging a one-out quick-moving grounder with two men on, which was enough to get the out at second and put Woo in a position to keep the Rays off the board that inning.
His next time to shine was in the top of the seventh. Eugenio Suárez and Polanco had both reached base to lead off the inning, Raley had bunted them over, and J.P. Crawford had walked to load the bases.
With the bases full and Seattle down by just a run, a lot of rookies would swing for the fences in that situation, get completely ahead of themselves, and strike out. But Young remained patient and looked to simply get the ball in the air, which he did on the second pitch of the at-bat.
After that, though, the M’s didn’t capitalize on the chance, despite a subsequent walk from Randy Arozarena. Raleigh came to the plate and faced a key pitching change, with sidearmer Kevin Kelly running circles around the Mariners catcher on his way to an inning-ending strikeout.
Positioning Strikes Again
It’s my white whale, it seems. But it would really be beneficial for the Mariners defense to push guys back towards the edge of the infield, especially when you’re looking for the double play.
Gabe Speier had an uncharacteristically rough start to his seventh inning, as Chandler Simpson popped the ball into an awkward hole to lead the inning off and Speier walked Yandy Díaz despite going up 1-2 against him, so for the second straight inning, the Rays had a runner in scoring position with nobody out.
Speier got Brandon Lowe fishing for the first out, but up next was Junior Caminero, who had been raking all game. The Rays’ third baseman fell to two strikes but worked the count full, all while Simpson swiped third.
Had Suárez been positioned at the edge of the outfield grass, Caminero’s rocket would have found his glove easily for the double play and the game would have remained 4-4 going into the eighth inning. Instead, he was playing further in than straight-up, and the ball zipped by him for a two-run double.
There are a fair few reasons why a deeper position would have made more sense there. Caminero, for starters, gets a lot of hard contact, so you want to give your guys that little split second more to get to the ball. Second off, Simpson is fast enough to score on basically anything that hits the dirt, so the double play ball is really the only option to keep a run off the board on the grounder.
It’s a game of inches, and these consistent suboptimal positionings on defense keep coming back to cost the Mariners games.
M’s Can’t Add On in Ninth
It’s not over ‘til it’s over, once again quoting Yogi Berra, and the Mariners sure made it interesting during the top of the ninth. Polanco and Raley both drew walks to start the inning off well against Griffin Jax, and a J.P. Crawford single loaded the bases with nobody out. Rays manager Kevin Cash swapped closers at that point, bringing southpaw Garrett Cleavinger to the hill against the left-handed Young. Acta made a counter-move and brought Mitch Garver to the plate, and this paid off well, with Garver notching a sacrifice fly to cut Tampa’s lead to one.
But all the momentum died after that. Randy Arozarena and Raleigh both popped out and the game was over. The M’s were 1-4 with runners in scoring position on Tuesday, yet .250 is a notable improvement from their second half RISP average of .212, second worst in MLB.
On Deck
Seattle was very lucky that both Texan teams lost on Tuesday, but they’re still in a precarious spot, just one and a half games ahead of the Rangers for the third wild card. Houston is still three games up on the Mariners for the division, while the other wild card spots are rapidly falling away - both the Yankees and Red Sox are four and a half games ahead of Seattle.
The M’s will try to salvage a game from this series against the Rays on Wednesday before heading to Atlanta for a must-win series against the Braves.
