“We Know Where We Are At”: Lone M’s Win in Bronx Shows Blueprint Despite Not Being Enough by Itself
Over the past seven games, the Mariners have found themselves outscored 34-11. It was 34-10 going into Thursday’s afternoon contest in the Bronx; the team rode a stellar six-inning, seven-punchout, no-run start from Logan Gilbert to break an ugly six-game losing streak. The spell, starting in Seattle against the Tigers, had seen them finally stop treading water - because they had sunk like a stone. Were it not for some unexpected production on Wednesday (ultimately in vain as the pitching gave up 10 runs that day), the team’s scoring would have been better described not in runs per game but games per run, Anthony Bennett style.
When things go this pear-shaped for a baseball team, a lot of fingers get pointed and plenty of blame gets cast. The Mariners are 57-65, having barely avoided two straight sweeps to the two top teams in the AL; there’s certainly have plenty of blame to go around. No one is hitting, the team’s hurlers aren’t putting up quality starts, and even when they have a lead, their bullpen blows up and another ugly L goes up on the calendar. Perhaps the finger can go at skipper Dan Wilson, or president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto, or the hitting crew of Edgar Martinez and Kevin Seitzer, or to strength and conditioning, or a player development side that can’t seem to turn good players into great ones, or an analytics department that seems to follow more than it leads, or owner John Stanton. Or maybe everybody, or maybe nobody.
The players blame people far more familiar: themselves. For a team that constantly talks about the importance of belief, the bluntness of their self-doubt is a bullhorn.
“It starts with me. I’m awful,” Cal Raleigh noted after their Tuesday 4-1 loss to open the series in New York. Over the course of the 2026 season, Raleigh has a .159/.267/.297 slash line, good for a worse batting average and OPS+ than all but one of Dave Valle’s Mariners seasons. Raleigh hadn’t been scheduled to speak to media that day, he simply held an impromptu presser where he called himself horrid in every possible way. Can you blame him for feeling like that?
Winning 1-0 on a Thursday Weston Wilson homer won’t meaningfully change things by itself; the M’s have seen too many would-be turnarounds go belly-up to believe that one win means the job is finished. That was true when they were a pair of games over .500, that was true when they were a pair of games under. 500, and it’s still true now that they’re seven games underwater.
Colt Emerson, Mariners Overcome Bullpen Collapse for Second Straight Walk-Off Win vs Twins
The Seattle Mariners raced out to an early 6-0 lead before their bullpen imploded in the eighth inning, allowing the Minnesota Twins to rally to inexplicably tie the game. But after blowing a save in the ninth, the Mariners redeemed themselves for their second walk-off win in as many days.
Rookie Colt Emerson’s hard-hit walk-off single capped another outstanding offensive performance by a club that has struggled with consistency swinging the bats this season. Combined with a scoreless seven innings from George Kirby, it looked like a blowout in the making, but these M’s like to give fans cardiac trouble.
The bullpen had other plans, with several top arms giving up timely home runs to allow their fellow wild-card contender back into the game. How did they squander a six-run lead before managing to survive with the win?
Mariners Walk Off Twins, Keep Momentum Alive Ahead of Trade Deadline
With the trade deadline just two days away, the Seattle Mariners’ season seemingly hinged on Saturday's game against the Minnesota Twins. With the contest tied 3-3 in the bottom of the ninth, Cal Raleigh delivered, driving home the winning run in walk-off fashion.
Seattle has struggled to put teams away all season, and that trend continued during the second game of the series. The Mariners scored three runs across the first two innings but were held scoreless the rest of the way until the ninth. This allowed the Twins to claw their way back, ultimately tying it up in the seventh inning.
The Mariners need to start stacking wins to make the playoffs, and Saturday's victory showed how they can do that.
Bats Clock Out Early, Mariners Drop Five Games Under in Game 111
The Mariners are five games under .500 for the second time this year. The first time was 25 games into the season, when they had a 4-9 record after an ugly sweep at the hands of the Texas Rangers. From then until the 62nd game of the year on June 2, they went 23-14 to take the division away from the Athletics and put themselves in the catbird seat as the team everyone expected to pull away with the West.
Two months later, the story of the AL West in 2026 could be summarized by paraphrasing the Sumerian King List: “Who was in first? Who was not in first?” But you don’t need a familiarity with 4,000-year-old Mesopotamian literature to see how the Mariners have dropped the ball and allowed the Rangers, then the Astros, to climb into first place. The bats have gone awfully quiet in the nearly 50 games since, with a .225/.297/.352 team slash line from June 3 to July 30. By the time the M’s faced off against the Twins on Friday, they were 53-57 and uncomfortably close to falling out of the race entirely.
When Mitch Garver struck out and finished a 5-3 loss, the situation declined even further. The M’s are now three games back of the division-leading Astros, two and a half games back of the Rangers for second place, and three games back of the Twins and Guardians for the third wild card spot. They are guaranteed a losing season record against the Guardians and Rangers - effectively making them a game further behind those teams - while one more loss to the Twins would lock in that same losing tiebreaker with them, too.
The bats fell asleep for six innings and missed opportunities throughout.
If the Mariners ever got the chance to wish into existence one simple change to their team, it might be prudent to choose the ability to punish mistakes. Underneath much of it, Seattle has a remarkably bad performance against pitches right down the middle: against pitches in the middle square of the strike zone - imagine it split like a tic-tac-toe grid - the M’s went into Friday night with the lowest batting average (.275), fifth-lowest slugging (.552), and sixth-lowest hard-hit rate (49.1%). These become even more stark when sorting for just fastball-type pitches: the lowest batting average (.279), third-lowest slugging (.522), and fifth-lowest hard-hit rate (51.9%).
Part of it is due to some bum luck, with a .234 batting average on balls in play (BABIP) on such pitches; one might imagine it would coalesce towards the .306 leaguewide middle-middle BABIP. The following graph shows the difference in spray locations between the Mariners and the team with both the highest batting average and highest slugging on pitches down the middle, the Phillies:
How Should Mariners Approach Deadline Four Games Under .500 Yet Still in Playoff Hunt?
The Mariners certainly know what they’re doing wrong after they dropped their latest series to the Los Angeles Dodgers on Thursday with a 6-2 loss.
“Yeah, it’s up to us,” Bryan Woo said after his five-run, five-inning losing outing. “The front office and coaches and everybody has put enough into the product on the field. It’s time for us to do something about it.”
But they don’t quite know how. The team has a consistent discipline issue, careening between lethargic defeatism and frantic efforts to arrest their decline. The failures of the latter cause the team to return to lethargy, and the cycle repeats on a near-nightly basis.
With this in mind, how should the Mariners approach the upcoming 2026 trade deadline? They have a few more days than they would otherwise have most years - with the deadline set for Aug. 3 - but the hour is fast approaching when they have to decide on tune-ups, changes, and deals.
The team is in an odd spot. It’s not a situation where they can reasonably go out and get one-year rentals like they did in 2025, but it’s also not a sell situation, either; they could very well still go on a run and make a splash in the playoffs. An intuitive approach for Seattle is to deal away upcoming free agents in exchange for longer-term options, but those sort of minor sales would have to be augmented by long-term options for the relevant team (say, a prospect). The M’s also have a bunch of starting pitchers, including near-MLB prospects, allowing them to trade from that pool to deepen other areas of the team.
One thing they cannot do is stand completely pat. Beyond that, however, it’s prudent to examine the attitudes that the Mariners might have about their trade deadline situation; there are lots of ways to skin a catfish, after all.
Five Mariners Homers Overcome Heavy-Hitting Dodgers in Chavez Ravine Thriller
The Mariners’ disastrous series against the Rangers finally put to rest the notion of the team as the AL West favorite, with a 52-55 record and a two and a half game deficit in the division with a month-long gauntlet fast approaching. What had been true for the whole season was now eminently evident to the entirety of the dugout: that both greater commitment and greater precision are needed in order to return to the playoffs, much less to the precipice of the pennant.
Iron, as they say, sharpens iron; who better to face than the two-time defending champion Dodgers? They immediately displayed why their offense is one of the best in baseball, working to quickly punish whatever Luis Castillo pitches leaked out over the plate. But the Mariners, needing a win to keep pace with the Rangers and Astros ahead of them, managed to put together a thrilling 7-6 victory on the backs of five home runs and some high-stress relief pitching.
It was the first Mariners win against the Dodgers since April 19, 2021. It was the first Mariners win in Dodger Stadium since June 28, 2009. To put it another way: the last time the M’s beat the Dodgers in the City of Angels, Rob Refsnyder was 18, Cal Raleigh was 12, Dominic Canzone was 11, and Julio Rodríguez was eight. Those were the four M’s to go deep on Tuesday.
Cal Raleigh and Julio Rodriguez hit a homer in the same game for the first time since April.
Before the season began, the duo of Rodríguez and Raleigh were projected to accrue between five and six wins above replacement (WAR) each. With 55 games left in the season, Rodríguez had 1.8 FanGraphs WAR (fWAR) and Raleigh 0.5, each reflective of injury-shortened years with significant struggles - especially in the case of Raleigh, who had a .165/.269/.300 slash line going into Tuesday.
The struggling catcher found himself on the IL for roughly a month-long stretch of time straddling May and June, but he appeared set to roar back on the scene after a homer-studded rehab assignment in Tacoma. That ended up being a mirage; Raleigh had a .170/.304/.277 slash line between his return on June 16 and the end of the Rangers series on July 27. The power stroke was especially absent, as he had just three homers during these 33 games.
Canzone Clinches Comeback in Texas, Keeps Mariners Season Alive
When Julio Rodríguez popped a two-on, one-out, right-down-Broadway cutter haplessly into center field, it looked like the moment when the downfall was obvious. This downfall, like many, was perhaps better conceptualized as a calque of the word’s German equivalent: going under - a slow process that takes a while to materialize after it is set into motion, but which becomes ever clearer until there is a point when it is undeniable.
On the flip side, the decision seemed easy for the brass. A Mariners loss would put the team three and a half games underneath the division lead right before the deadline, at a time when many teams would be looking for the likes of Randy Arozarena or even George Kirby or Logan Gilbert.
If Dominic Canzone failed to reach base, it would be the culmination of multiple wasted opportunities; the M’s had two men on with one out in the fourth and the same amount of baserunners with no outs in the sixth, all with nothing to show for it. The Texas Rangers’ two-run lead was a number not insurmountable but that seemed hard to overcome for an offense whose approach could scarcely have been called Fabian over the course of the year, because the Fabian Strategy actually worked.
Rangers reliever Cole Winn fell behind Canzone 2-0 and hung a splitter right down the pipe, a little below the middle of the zone. For the first time in more than two weeks, Canzone walloped a homer, putting the Mariners in the lead.
“I got him 2-0 pretty quickly, and with first and second there, he’s gotta come in the zone with something, and they’d been throwing me soft pretty much the whole series,” Canzone told Mariners TV’s Brad Adam. “Not that I was necessarily sitting on it, but just trying to get something elevated and get it in the air.”
Seattle, who had been looking for the game to latch onto as a starting point, clung to their lead for the rest of the game, winning 6-4 and preventing - for now - calamity.
Mariners Build Momentum Ahead of Trade Deadline, Clinch Series Win With 6-3 Win vs. Giants
Seattle won their second straight game against the lowly Giants 6-3. Behind six strong innings from starter Logan Gilbert, a shutdown bullpen, and timely hitting, the Mariners looked primed to go on a run to put their first-half struggles in the rearview mirror.
With two weeks remaining until the trade deadline, Seattle needed to come out of the All-Star break with some urgency. After getting throttled in the first game of the series 7-0, it looked like the team had not used their time off to reset well. But after two satisfying victories, and the struggling Cincinnati Reds coming into town, Seattle is one more series win away from cementing itself as a buyer in the wide-open American League.
Dan Wilson pushed all the right buttons Sunday, a rare sentence for this Mariners club. His timely deployment of pinch-hitters and bullpen usage showcased what this ballclub can look like at its best. Yet there are still some things to work on as with any baseball team.
Bats Take Nine-Inning Nap as Giants Pummel Mariners 7-0
A little over a year before Friday night, Julio Rodríguez announced that he would not participate in an All-Star Game he had been selected for, noting he would rather focus on improving his own game to a better standard.
Rodríguez wasn’t on the field on Friday, recovering from a concussion sustained earlier that month when a Nolan Schanuel throw bounced off the back of his head. Concussions are a case of needing however much time he needs in order to recover from the knock. But it means he can’t lead by example as he did after the Mariners’ horrific loss in the Bronx last year.
And it seems no other hitter is willing to put himself forward in such a way. The starting pitchers have borne the brunt of the blame when they’ve let the team down, especially Bryan Woo. But aside from some strong words from Cal Raleigh after a pungent loss in Cleveland - words that seemingly only went heeded for a six-game stretch - it has been crickets from the team leaders and an utter lack of urgency from the manager.
“It’s the first one back, and I think guys got back in the groove today and looking for us to come out tomorrow and have different results,” said M’s skipper Dan Wilson, “Obviously, you want to get off on the second half with a win, but just weren’t able to get anything going offensively and tomorrow we get a chance to turn that around.”
Those may have been Wilson’s strongest words after his team lost 7-0 to a shambolic San Francisco Giants squad that entered the game 41-55, second only to the Colorado Rockies in NL West helplessness. Sure, one of their few bright spots, a 21-year-old masher named Bryce Eldrige, did some of the damage. But the M’s made visiting starter Landen Roupp, a C-list pitcher on a good day, look like a veritable barnburner.
It can’t go on like this - well, in the immortal words of Mick McCarthy, it can - but the M’s won’t be a playoff team or even a .500 team if it does.
WATCH: What Has Gone Wrong for Mariners’ Cal Raleigh During Dreadful First Half?
After smashing 60 home runs in 2025, Cal Raleigh has endured a brutal follow-up season thus far, battling injuries and sporting an ugly .169 batting average heading into the All-Star break. What has led to such a massive drop off from a historically great campaign?
Emerald City Spectrum writer Nick Lee dissects Raleigh's dismal first half by the numbers, analyzes what has gone so wrong for the slugger so far, and breaks down what the “Big Dumper” can do to right the ship as the Mariners try to get back on track and vie for another AL West title in the final three months of the regular season.
Three Burning Questions for Mariners at All-Star Break
The Seattle Mariners, along with the rest of MLB, have completed the unofficial "first half" of the 2026 season. The baseball world focuses on Philadelphia over the next few days as the All-Star festivities begin in the City of Brotherly Love. The Mariners enter the break one game below .500 at 48-49. It certainly has been a frustrating, uneven first half of a season where the team, and its fans, felt a berth to the franchise's first ever World Series was at hand.
Nothing in this beautiful, amazing, dumb sport is that simple. Now, the Mariners have serious questions. Ones that need addressing if the Mariners are to even make the playoffs at all, much less punch their ticket to the Fall Classic.
Are Cal Raleigh and Josh Naylor ever going to snap out of it?
The fact that the Mariners are in a playoff spot (tied for last Wild Card spot) despite getting virtually nothing from Raleigh and Naylor is a minor miracle. They are batting a combined .218 with just 17 homers combined. For reference, these two sluggers had - you might want to sit down for this - 49 home runs before the All-Star break. After Naylor arrived at the deadline last season, he was an instant spark and the deal he signed to stay in Seattle long term seemed like a no-brainer.
Mariners Searching for Answers After 6-1 Loss to Rays Extends Florida Losing Streak to Five Games
Enduring a horrifying road trip to the Sunshine State, the Seattle Mariners continue to frustrate their fan base as they fell flat again in their 6-1 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays on Saturday. Poor luck, situational hitting, and an abnormal dud from ace Logan Gilbert made for a lackluster performance at Tropicana Field.
Gilbert allowed nine hits and two walks, but in his defense, he exited the game having only given up two runs to that point. He did leave runners on first and second as reliever Gabe Spier proceeded to give up a three-run blast on the first pitch he threw. That promptly put the game well out of reach for a Mariners team that has been struggling offensively as of late.
Continuing a season-long trend, Seattle had no issues with reaching base. They put 10 batters on, but their issues arose getting them home once again. The Mariners went 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position (RISP) Saturday, bringing their five-game road trip total to a shocking 2-for-38 (.053).
Once a division favorite, the Mariners now sit two games back in the AL West at 47-49. No matter the outcome of the series finale on Sunday, they will enter the All-Star break below .500, an astonishing outcome considering their expectations heading into the year.
Mariners Drop Fourth Straight as Randy Arozarena Mishap Causes Tension
The Mariners are back under .500, with a 47-48 record nearly 60% of the way through the year, reeling from their fourth straight loss in Florida on Friday, this time by a score of 7-2. With the result, the Rays have won 12 of their last 16, while the M’s have lost 10 of their last 16.
The first inning was something of a microcosm of the way these two teams entered the game, one with tons of fight and firepower and the other limping along. The final line from that frame of zero runs for either team was reached two starkly different ways: from the Mariners, it was three ground ball outs, but for the Rays, it was a double, a walk, and an infield single to create a pickle for Mariners starter Luis Castillo.
Its greatest and most obvious microcosm was the defense. J.P. Crawford, on the first pitch of the game, dribbled a ball up the middle that Rays second baseman Richie Palacios snared on a falling run. Meanwhile, in the bottom half, the selfsame Crawford was unable to make a play on a ground ball hit directly his way and created the aforementioned infield single.
The obvious example of completely preventable defensive damage was when Randy Arozarena slowed to a trot on a fifth inning foul ball that was extremely catchable, after which Rays hitter Cedric Mullins cracked a home run to put the Rays up 3-1. That moment had infinitely more impact on the course of the game than what I’m about to describe - and caused plenty of tension between Arozarena and starter Luis Castillo - but there was another moment that summed up the energy (or lack thereof) among the Mariners.
Mariners Lose Batting Fight in Spite of Strong Glovework, Drop Series to Marlins
“It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog.” It’s one of those quotes that is older than its normal attribution (in this case, Dwight Eisenhower). Today’s common formulation of the phrase may indeed trace back to a coach at the University of Washington back in the late 1920s, but as with so many things that are said before they are written, its true origin lies somewhere in the primordial mud of history.
Many on the Mariners - especially skipper Dan Wilson - often discuss the team’s fight and willingness to claw back from adversity. But the defining moment of the team’s 2-0 loss to the Miami Marlins on Wednesday was its very end: with both ABS challenges available and two outs in the top of the ninth, Cole Young watched a 2-2 pitch outside get called strike three to end the game. He did not issue a challenge, simply hanging his head in shame as he walked back to the dugout. The brief window of time to get his team a lifeline passed quickly.
“I think sometimes that's not the first thing that pops into your head in that kind of a situation,” Wilson said, “but you still have to remind yourself sometimes about the ABS.”
But as they say - once is a happenstance, twice is a coincidence, and thrice is a pattern. The Mariners have had games like Wednesday’s, where players across the lineup leave things on the table, plenty more times than that in 2026. If the players aren’t clawing and biting and fighting for every inch, if that aspect of the game is not a habit, then how deep of a well of resolve do the M’s really have? If the guy up at the plate with two outs in the ninth inning isn’t aware that the team has both challenges, how much water is this ship leaking?
The fight didn’t show up on offense, at least, though the M’s defense bailed themselves out of worse trouble. In a way, it was an inverse of Tuesday’s series opener when late action from the Mariners bats wasn’t enough to counteract the team’s defensive sluggishness. It was a loss all the same.
Mariners Squander Comeback Effort in Extras, Fall in 6-5 Walk-Off Heartbreaker to Marlins
The Seattle Mariners flew into south Florida as victors of five of their last six games, riding a wave of momentum back to the top of the AL West standings. Ready to build on their back-to-back series wins, Seattle was primed to go on a winning streak heading into the All-Star break this upcoming weekend.
The upstart Marlins had other plans, however, walking off their American League opponent in the bottom of the 10th inning to steal the series opener.
Hurler Bryan Woo continued to struggle on the road, allowing 10 baserunners and three runs across just five innings.The Marlins raced ahead to a 4-0 lead as the Mariners failed to score until the fifth. Seattle had the bases loaded in the fourth inning and came away with no runs, continuing a trend where the team seemingly forgets how to hit until the fifth inning or later.
Seattle rallied to a 5-4 lead in the eighth, but it proved insufficient as they were walked off two innings later, sealing another frustrating loss for a team intent on playing below their potential.
Analysis: Why Seiya Suzuki Could Be Missing Piece for Mariners
After coming up a few innings short of making the fall classic last October, the Seattle Mariners came into the season as one of the favorites to represent the American League in the World Series. Yet, even after winning five of its past six games, Seattle sits hovering just above the .500 mark.
Injuries and inconsistency have been the main culprits for not being able to pull away just yet in a pedestrian AL West division, but the inability to hit lefties has proven to be the M’s Achilles’ heel. During the offseason, the team added outfielder Rob Refsynder with the hopes he would help in that department, but he has been abysmal all season and recently landed on the disabled list with a knee injury, creating even more questions against southpaws.
Some improvement needs to come from current star players such as Cal Raleigh and Julio Rodriguez on this front, but outside additions are needed for a second half surge and a shot to get to the World Series for the first time. Of all the realistic options potentially out there, one stands out as a win/win for both teams with the pitcher-needy Cubs and outfielder Seiya Suzuki, who would be the ideal deadline addition for the M’s for a variety of reasons.
Mariners Shove Second Straight Shutout of Blue Jays, Win Second Straight Series
How quickly things can turn around, how fleeting streaks of play can be.
That is both a consolation and a warning for the Mariners, who finished off a 5-1 homestand on Sunday with a 4-0 win over the Toronto Blue Jays. Just a week prior, they were reeling from one of the worst losses of the season, out of first with a losing record. They are now in first place by a game and a half and three games above .500.
It’s a good start, but the team still needs to build upon it with as many series wins as possible over the rest of the season. No team is as good as they look when they win nor as bad as they look when they lose, but every time the M’s look like the best versions of themselves, they inspire a little bit more confidence in others and in their own hearts.
Emerson Hancock had one of his best starts of the season, shoving seven scoreless.
With the piggyback permanently on hold, Emerson Hancock had the runway for a full start on Sunday. Going into his outing, however there were questions as to whether he could deal as well as he had earlier in the season.
Despite a career-best 3.47 ERA, 3.77 FIP, and 1.048 WHIP this year, Hancock’s last four starts had seen him give up 13 earned runs in 20 innings, an average of five frames per start. He had struggled to locate his sweeper during these outings, a fact that left him vulnerable to teams willing to ambush the fastball. These teams additionally benefited from some luck that his opponents hadn’t seen as much during his first couple months of work.
Mariners Blast Blue Jays on Independence Day, Still Need Consistency
About the only similarity between the Mariners’ game on July 3 and their game on July 4 was the general state of the Toronto Blue Jays offense. Even there, the degree of futility varied from day to day; the Jays had a generally mediocre offensive day on Friday and a horrific one on Saturday. The latter performance was largely due to the Mariner starter Logan Gilbert’s excellence.
Other than that, the games could not have been any more different. In one, the Mariners fell 2-0 as their offense failed to show up. In the other, Seattle torched the Blue Jays so badly that Myles Straw was pitching in the bottom of the eighth despite not being a pitcher. The 11-0 victory that the M’s put together was tremendously cathartic for a team that had been tied for fifth-lowest in run production during the month. The most catharsis of all was reserved for one Randy Arozarena, as despite his largely consistent career-year production, he had been the biggest standout in his team’s ugly batting performance the day prior: he lost both his team’s ABS challenges with nobody on in the first inning, neither in a conducive count for challenging.
Arozarena, as it turned out, was actually on the bad side of a 2-0 strike call in the bottom of the first with nobody on. This time, he didn’t challenge. The issues with his challenges in the first had been related to inning, yes, but challenging in the first inning isn’t bad if it’s a full count or there are men on base; but both of Arozarena’s challenges on Friday came with nobody on and without three balls. In any event, the Mariners left fielder whacked a double off the right field wall. Neither Dominic Canzone nor Cal Raleigh knocked him in, but perhaps it set a more favorable tone than the day prior, when the M’s were a few hairs away from being no-hit.
Randy Arozarena capped off a monster second inning with a grand slam.
Two men fell quickly to Jays starter Shane Bieber to begin the second, but the third out is no guarantee against any MLB offense. Cole Young lined a double into the right center gap and Victor Robles shot a liner of his own into left to log Seattle’s first run, but the real damage came a few minutes later as a single and a walk loaded the bases for the aforementioned Arozarena.
Bryce Miller Gem Gives M’s Sweep of Halos Despite Absent Offense
The last time the M’s and Angels faced each other, it was one of many disappointing series for the Mariners during the first half of the season. Seattle won the first game of the set, but as they would do several times in the following weeks and months, they dropped the final two and lost the series as their offense died and the pitching got ambushed.
Seattle’s bats may have fallen incredibly silent on Thursday evening as the two squads finished their three-game series the day after both took a rest due to a 2026 World Cup game a block away, but Bryce Miller beared down once again as he utterly stymied the Angels’ hitters inning after inning on his way to seven frames of brilliance. That, more than anything, was the bedrock of the team’s 1-0 win.
Bryce Miller didn’t give up a hit in the first six innings as his excellent year continued.
Even with his innings being limited with the piggybacks, Miller had been one of the Mariners’ most fearsome pitchers since returning from the injured list. His expert mixture of a four-seamer, slider, splitter throughout his starts produced tough scenes for opposing hitters.
Miller had a bit of a tougher time in his previous outing against the Pirates, however. His three earned runs in 5 ⅔ innings were perhaps downstream of the fact that the slider was conspicuously absent from his workhorse usage, with the hurler reliant on just his four-seamer and splitter for 59% of his offerings.
And yet Miller did much the same against the Angels on Thursday to clearly better results. Halo hitters went down one after another as they couldn’t effectively differentiate between his two go-to offerings. The visitors had 10 whiffs and five strikeouts during the first three innings, with Miller at 35 pitches through those frames. A big part of this was the fact that he could control his splitter effectively once his (already minimal) opening jitters were over.
Clutch Hits Overcome Absent Slug, Ample Strikeouts; Mariners Log Second Straight Win
For the first time since June 9, the Mariners won back-to-back games. Tuesday night’s 8-3 victory over the Angels marked that occasion, one that the Mariners may want to quickly forget, but the way the team played during the game is something they surely want to keep going forward as they look to claw their way into a secure first place slot.
Both starter Bryan Woo and the Mariners’ clutch hitting had a recovery, as the hurler got the win and the quality start while the team went 5-13 with runners in scoring position. There were still issues to iron out: Cal Raleigh continued scuffling at the dish, the team struck out 16 times, and there was just one extra-base knock. But they papered over their flaws on Tuesday and notched another step in their road to retaking the division.
Bryan Woo recovered from his clunker by the Allegheny, pitching into the seventh and getting the win.
Woo was the undisputed ace of the rotation in 2025, but his struggles in 2026 have been well-documented. Most recently, he gave up five runs in a four-inning outing against the Pittsburgh Pirates, letting one inning run away from him and leaving well before he would have liked to. Harboring evident frustration and seemingly in a mental block, it was an outing that could have defined rock bottom for a pitcher.
Perhaps that description is apt, because Woo bounced back in force on Tuesday. Like many of the Mariners struggles that seem to have been put on hold for two games against the Angels, it’s unclear whether it’s a dead cat bounce or the beginnings of a true resurgence, but Woo certainly shoved like it was the latter during his 6 ⅓ innings of work against the Halos.
Unlike many of his outings, where he takes down the order the first time through with nothing but the fastball, Woo was mixing everything in his arsenal right from the rip on Tuesday. Leadoff man Zach Neto fought with the Mariners hurler in an eight-pitch at-bat to begin the game, and Woo’s deliveries were as follows: three sinkers, two four-seamers, two sliders, and a sweeper. Neto grounded out and Woo continued with the kitchen-sink approach.
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