Granite Rock, Side of Garv Sauce: Mariners Notch 2-1 Victory, Extend Streak to Seven
SEATTLE, Wash. — Seven wins in a row. A much-needed quality start from Luis Castillo combined with the barest of margins on offense to produce Seattle’s seventh straight victory, yet in a dog-eat-dog chase for the playoffs—where three teams enter and only two get to make it—there is never any rest for the weary.
Well, perhaps there was a smidgen of rest, as the M’s didn’t have to go beyond the regulation nine innings on Friday.
Cal Raleigh Notches Pair of Doubles
The word “slump” means different things to different people. For some, like the unfortunate (well, once—he homered for Texas on Friday) Dylan Moore, a slump means something along the lines of oblivion. For others, it makes them a subpar player. And for the elite of the elite, a slump reduces them to merely “good”.
Cal Raleigh, the Mariners catcher in an MVP chase, is fitting squarely into that latter type of slump. After accruing a 1.011 OPS during the first half of the season—one of many marks that put him on pace for what would have been the greatest catching season of all time—he has cooled off since, with an above-average .764 OPS, but that has still reduced his 2025 from all-time caliber to “merely” amazing.
Of course, an elite player’s slump doesn’t preclude key production. With one gone in the bottom of the fourth, Raleigh hopped on the first pitch he saw from Angels starter—and notable former Mariner—Yusei Kikuchi. The ball fell a couple feet inside the left field line and Raleigh had himself a stand-up double.
Jorge Polanco knocked him in with a double of his own, and the M’s had an early one-run lead.
Raleigh, for his part, cracked another two-bagger in the eighth. He didn’t come around to score, but the hit marked the first time he had gotten two extra-base knocks in the same game since his two-homer game on August 24.
Massive Outing from Castillo
The Mariners needed a rock-solid start from Castillo on Friday. The bullpen had worked to exhaustion over two previous extra inning games, while the batting engine sputtered and had a couple dashes of production but didn’t ever get anything big across. And that’s exactly what they got: the Rock went six full innings (working into the seventh but not getting an out), struck out five, walked two, gave up three hits, and only allowed one earned run.
Despite getting back on the horse with the help of pinpoint secondaries during his bounceback start in Atlanta, La Piedra returned to the heaters, not throwing his first changeup until the third inning (incidentally a strikeout). But he did indeed continue his truly massive Sunday shift: the sinker was nowhere to be found.
The four-seamer, however, was doing its job. It stayed a little above 95 miles an hour, but the key to success was his pinpoint accuracy. No longer was he missing out over the plate or well off it, as pitch after pitch found a favorable corner. A Mike Trout strikeout with a man on second in the top of the third got him out of his first jam, one of four punchouts in the first three frames.
With an out in the top of the fourth, however, Castillo began to lose a little of his two-strike control. Yoán Moncada fell behind 0-2 but worked a one-out walk in the fourth, and plenty of other pitches ended up out of the zone in that frame. Despite these issues, Castillo got through the inning without anything coming close to crossing the plate. The fifth went by quickly, and with Castillo at 73 pitches, there was good hope that he could make it through seven.
That hope faded with two outs in the sixth. He nabbed the first two strikes against Chris Taylor but missed the next three, and the payoff pitch was well over the plate. Taylor softly lined it into left field for a single. Moncada walked and a subsequent wild pitch put two men in scoring position for Los Angeles.
Taylor Ward nearly flipped the score for the Halos, striking a ball deep into the air in right center. It was the only batted ball any Angel hit over 95 miles per hour on Friday, and it had some serious promise. Victor Robles—who in the previous half inning seemed to be under some discomfort—drifted back, fully tracking the ball into his glove and saving two runs from scoring. Seattle still had their one-run lead through six.
Ghosts of Victory Past
Josh Naylor had struggled with some shoulder tightness all game on Thursday, but the Big Grumper toughed it out for all 12 innings. Evidently, though, he needed a rest, and so Dan Wilson tapped Luke Raley as Seattle’s starting first baseman on Friday night.
Other than one play, his game was unremarkable. He went 0-3 with one strikeout at the plate while not seeing much challenge at first.
Let’s rewind just a bit. With Luis Castillo through six innings on 93 pitches, Dan Wilson would normally turn the ball over to the bullpen—but that is not what happened. With the bullpen exhausted from 14 ⅔ innings of work over the previous two days, Wilson tried to squeeze every last bit of energy from his starter.
That didn’t work. Castillo’s velocity was down two miles an hour from where it had been earlier in his start, and his control had already slipped. Luis Rengifo hit a soft liner into left for a leadoff single, and by then Wilson saw the writing on the wall and brought in Vargas.
Oswald Peraza struck out, but a slider low and in to Logan Davidson skipped off Garver’s chest and Rengifo alertly bolted to second. Only a couple pitches later, Davidson chopped a ball down the right field line.
Now we return to Luke Raley. He was perfectly positioned, playing decently close to the line right on the edge of the outfield grass. But he reacted a little too late and moved a little too slowly, and the ball skipped past him for a game-tying double. That one mistake resulted in the only run of the game for the Halos, as Vargas buckled down and got two more strikeouts, including an inning-ending punchout against Mike Trout with two men on in the newly tied game.
Duality of Mitch Garver
The Mariners’ backup catcher is often a much-maligned member of Seattle’s lineup. His defense is noticeably weaker than Raleigh’s in all aspects—there’s a reason he’s a backup—and he is a below average hitter, slashing just .210/.301/.343 in 2025 going into Friday’s game. The M’s acquired him after a solid offensive year with the Rangers’ World Series-winning 2023 team, but Garver fell below average and has stayed there since.
But in a team sport, there is more than just the absolute; there is also the role. And when it comes to role players on MLB teams, Mitch Garver doesn’t get the appreciation he deserves. He’s a backup to the best catcher in MLB, so he’s naturally going to look that much worse in comparison. But when you compare him to other backup catchers—what his role is—he is pretty solid.
There is another aspect to his role on the Mariners that is overlooked: he’s a pretty clear platoon guy. His slash increases to .248/.340/.421 against southpaws in 2025, a fairly above average line. In the second half of the season, he has been even better against lefties, slashing .279/.353/.558. Now, the full season numbers against lefties aren’t elite by any means, but they give you a sense of how Garver is more valuable than he might seem.
As for Friday, though, the platoon thing is a bit of a red herring. Garver went 0-2 against the lefty Kikuchi and came up with one out in the seventh against Connor Brogdon, a right-handed reliever. Brogdon worked ahead of Garver 1-2, but he missed his spot on what was supposed to be a fastball up out of the zone. It zoomed right into the top half of the strike zone, and Garver put a strong, curt swing on it.
Seattle’s Friday backstop blew a souvenir into Edgar’s cantina. Brogdon sheepishly glared, eyes not really pointed at anything particular, as that bad feeling of having just grooved one washed over him.
It was the last run anyone would score in Friday’s game, as Gabe Speier and Andrés Muñoz held down the fort and etched Seattle’s 2-1 victory into the annals of history.
On Deck
It seems the baseball gods truly desire suspense. For the entirety of Seattle’s massive slump, when the Mariners were as cold as liquid nitrogen, the Astros were like liquid oxygen—not quite as cold, but still chilled to the bone. The Rangers had their surges but were in much too deep a rut to climb out of quickly.
Yet as soon as the Mariners found their form again and the Rangers finally went on a tear that had been building up all season long, something seems to have awoken in the spirit of the Astros. Suddenly tied with Seattle, Houston clobbered the driftless Atlanta Braves 11-3 to make sure the M’s couldn’t overtake them so quickly. The Rangers, meanwhile, gave the New York Mets a solid beating, taking their fifth straight and improving to 78-70.
As things stand from Friday’s results, the Mariners and Astros are both two games ahead of Texas with 80-68 records. Extrapolating from the three squads’ Pythagorean win/loss percentages—as I have often done—gives us expected records of 87-75 for both the Mariners and Astros, while Texas would be expected to go 86-76. But I suspect that at least two of these teams are going to push themselves that extra mile in order to make sure the others stay down. The Mariners may yet need 90 wins for the division, a couple less just to make it past the ballroom gates.
Seattle’s magic number over Texas (combination of Mariners wins and Rangers losses) is 12, while their magic number over Houston is 13 or 14, depending on who wins the all-important upcoming Houston series. For now, though, the M’s have to get it done against the Angels in the final two games of this series.