Big Dumper Returns: Cal Raleigh’s Three Homers Power Mariners Past Phillies
With both teams sending their top starters to the mound, a low-scoring game was expected between the Seattle Mariners and Philadelphia Phillies on Monday night. A pitching duel it was not, however, as the Mariners bludgeoned Zach Wheeler and the playoff-bound Phillies by a score of 9-2.
The M’s offense got hot early and stayed hot, scoring five runs in the first inning to give their starter Logan Gilbert quite the cushion. Cal Raleigh finally found his stroke, blasting three home runs and working a walk as well.
Gilbert continued his Cy Young-worthy campaign by battling through five innings, and Seattle’s bullpen put up zeros the rest of the day to put Philadelphia on ice.
The team is being resilient and finding a way to win, as their superstar catcher noted.
“We’ve endured a lot this year,” Raleigh said afterward. “We are fighting with everything we’ve got right now.”
Leo Rivas Walks Off Cubs, Gives M’s Homestand Jolt
It’s the kind of thing that engenders legitimate hope in a team so downtrodden, but it’s the kind of thing fringe Mariners role players have done for decades in ultimately sour-ending seasons.
Regardless of the view from 30,000 feet, it was a magical moment for those celebrating within a three-foot radius of Leo Rivas in the bottom of the 10th on Friday night.
The game had been a back-and-forth affair between the M’s and Cubs, two teams with high expectations going into 2026 but only one of whom had performed up to snuff. At times, Seattle looked like the team they had constructed on paper, with Brendan Donovan and Cal Raleigh both producing runs. At others, the Cubs ambushed mistake pitches from multiple Mariners pitchers, and it had gone to extras before Seattle triumphed 6-5.
Emerson Hancock recovered from early struggles to put together almost six innings.
During the first half of the season, Mariners starting pitching had the sixth best ERA, fifth best StatCast expected ERA (xERA [1]), best fielding independent pitching (FIP [2]) and third best expected FIP (xFIP [3]) of any rotation in baseball.
In the second half, however, Seattle’s starters have had the seventh worst ERA, fourth worst FIP, and ninth worst xFIP. Their xERA ranking of 10th best since the break is small consolation with their struggles spanning all the non-StatCast metrics. They went from a league-best 11.0 starting pitcher FanGraphs WAR (fWAR) pre-break to a second-to-last 0.5 fWAR post-break.
Mariners Survive Brewers, Gain Ground in Wild Card Race
Seattle came limping into Milwaukee after getting pummeled 22-0 the night before, looking to exorcise some demons against the Brewers on Wednesday night. Facing former top prospect Dustin May, the Mariners got the bats going early, plating four runs in the first inning before ultimately winning 7-5.
Current Cy Young candidate Logan Gilbert, emboldened by an early lead, battled through five innings before being pulled in the sixth. Likely two batters too late.
As has been the case all season, Dan Wilson made another questionable decision that nearly cost his team the game. But his players persevered, allowing Seattle to gain considerable ground in the wild-card race.
Did Seattle have a great offensive performance? Absolutely. Were they simultaneously incredibly lucky? Unequivocally. That’s a luxury not often enjoyed by this team as it tries to turn its season around.
Mariners’ Gutsy Series Win Offers Team Last Lifeline for 2026 Season
When Andrés Muñoz got Taylor Trammell to chase a changeup for strike three on Sunday, he yelled with a ferocity rarely seen even from a man called “Señor Smoke”.
It was an angry, happy catharsis. Had he made slightly better pitches to Jose Altuve or Daulton Varsho two days prior, the Mariners would have swept the Astros and put some real heat on the once and future AL West champions; they would have been two games back of their rivals with the tiebreaker long since clinched.
Instead, the M’s are four games back with 37 left to play. But there’s no use crying over spilt milk, and Muñoz made sure to redeem himself in the bottom of the ninth in the Houston rubber match.
“To be honest with you, that - especially here - hurts a lot when those things happen, because you feel like you let the team down,” Muñoz said. “But I’ve been through these situations a lot, and I’m able to just flush those things easier, especially with the outing that I had.”
Getting to that one-run lead wasn’t as simple as it might have been based on the way the M’s offense had been playing earlier in the series. Unlike the first two contests, when the team got it done with runners on, it was a return to regular programming on Sunday night as they went 1-11 with runners in scoring position.
The M’s, regardless, logged a badly-needed 3-2 win.
Cal Raleigh recorded the mother of all Crawford Box jobs in the sixth, a much-needed stroke of luck.
The winning run on Sunday was a 327-foot fly ball that left the bat at a 45-degree angle. Since the beginning of the StatCast era in 2015, there have been 57 such batted balls - and Raleigh’s was just the second to become a hit (the first was this Yandy Díaz deep fly in a minor league stadium).
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.
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.
Bullpen Rises to Occasion as Mariners Snap Five-Game Skid, Take Series Finale From Rays
Finally putting an end to their losing ways, the Seattle Mariners’ offense showed up early and the bullpen delivered a brilliant performance in a resounding 8-2 rout of the Tampa Bay Rays, salvaging the series finale to avoid the sweep going into the All-Star break.
The Mariners needed to use seven pitchers to secure the win due to a scary first inning injury to starter Emerson Hancock that resulted in him exiting the contest an inning later. The offense picked the ‘pen up, however, plating seven runs by the fourth inning, and eight runs overall.
It was a rare complete team performance by Seattle, and manager Dan Wilson hopes to get some key players back from injury coming out of the break while building off his team’s lights-out execution as the season marches towards the playoffs.
“Talk about a team effort from top to bottom today,” Wilson said afterward.
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.
“We Can’t Get Satisfied With One Win”: Mariners Fall Below .500, Below First Place with Cuyahoga Collapse
Mariners manager Dan Wilson didn’t appear to treat Sunday’s game like a must-win contest. This was despite the fact that the team’s AL West lead had all but evaporated and that the game directly determined a tiebreaker between the M’s and Cleveland Guardians, one that could in turn be the difference between the Mariners getting a first round bye or not. The guidelines of long-term player management were all but catechisms for Wilson even as his team’s 4-1 lead fell into the dust.
“Our guys, they want the ball, and we'll give them the ball when we can, and when they want it, and some guys are available for one-pluses and some aren't, and we make adjustments as we go,” Wilson said after his team’s 6-5 loss. “And that's just where we're at right now.”
There was no willingness on Wilson’s part to stretch anyone beyond their usual usage. No reliever up-downs would be allowed and no starter could surpass 100 pitches; in short, there would be no second wind for his team. By the time such second winds are allowed in September, it may be too late, just as it was in 2024 (and before Wilson’s tenure, in 2023, too). Such is the peril and just dessert of treating the first five months of the season like extended Spring Training.
They fell out of first place, under .500, dropped the series and the season series, and yet again let an opening win go unfulfilled in the final two games as they took their foot off the gas.
The Mariners, injury-conscious given the circumstances, committed to reliance on Michael Rucker and Josh Simpson.
Starter Emerson Hancock worked into the sixth inning, but with 98 pitches and a heap of armside misses to Cooper Ingle with two outs, Wilson went to the bullpen and called upon Eduard Bazardo. It took a bit for him to settle in, as he gave up a double, but his punchout of Patrick Bailey sealed the deal for that frame.
A series of left-handers made for the Mariners to go to Gabe Speier in the seventh, and though he worked around a pair of two-out hits to punch in another clean frame, his usage marked the last quality arm before closer Andrés Muñoz. Jose A. Ferrer had pitched in both previous games, and with his 39 season appearances, perhaps the two-on, one-off guideline was the best one to treat like a catechism
Mariners Pitchers Lock Down Win Despite Continued Batting Sluggishness
A bobble from Guardians second baseman Travis Bazzana in the top of the seventh seemed like the first piece of good luck the Mariners had gotten in a very long time. It came with two outs and a man on third, turning what would have been an inning-ending grounder into a go-ahead run for the Mariners. It proved the winning run in Seattle’s 3-1 victory against Cleveland.
On the one hand, none of their issues really fixed themselves. The team couldn’t get a fourth run for the 12th straight game, marking just the third such streak in team history. Pitch recognition woes and issues against left-handers continued with no real end in sight. But on the other hand, for the fifth time in those dozen games, it was enough.
Luis Castillo tossed a quality start, with all his pitches in action.
Mariners starter Luis Castillo came into the game with a better track record since the onset of his first piggyback outing, but there had still been notable inconsistencies for him. Despite a 3.38 ERA in his six appearances since the first piggyback, he was still without a quality start aside from his first outing of the year. Going into a game where the M’s did nothing but continue to crawl along on offense, he needed to find his best stuff for a full start.
Luckily for the M’s, Castillo had a firm command of all three of the pitches he needs to build a good outing. The slider was his most common delivery, followed by the four-seamer and changeup in that order, but he threw each quite often with the occasional sinker thrown in.
Gilbert, Mariners Salvage Red Sox Matinee, Keep Heads Above Water
All wins are equal on the final sheet of standings at the end of the year, but not all these wins mean the same things when they are played. Some wins are triumphant jewels in the crowns of great streaks, others are dead cat bounces for a team plummeting into the gutter. The Mariners’ 3-1 win over the Red Sox on Sunday was neither of those, but it was the definitional salvaged game, turning what could have been a sweep to go under .500 on the summer solstice into a lost series and a 40-39 record with the halfway point nearly reached.
The offense, for the eighth straight game, didn’t impress, but the Mariners worked a win anyway thanks to an incredible start from a rebounding elite arm, a couple of timely hits, and a sharp bullpen. And yet the win may be pyrrhic, with another key player falling to the injury bug.
Logan Gilbert worked into the seventh and kept the Red Sox to a single run.
While the Mariners haven’t had everyone clicking at the same time, they have had the relative luxury of often getting a cold man hot once their hot man goes cold. While Emerson Hancock has seemingly taken a big step back over the past two outings, Logan Gilbert has finally settled into a real adjustment against the five-and-dive outings and long at-bats that had created them.
This adjustment has been quite simple and equally effective: instead of relying solely on his secondary pitches in favorable counts - a strategy that teams effectively countered by simply laying off the low sliders and buried splitters they would see time and time again - Gilbert has truly mixed things up with fastballs, curveballs, splitters, and sliders in these counts. This means, in the aggregate, that he is throwing the heater a lot more.
Mariners Forget Fundamentals, Drop Saturday Game 8-3 to Nationals
It seems the Mariners are yet to escape their consistent inconsistency. After having beaten the Washington Nationals 10-2 the previous day, with every starting Mariner position player getting a knock, the team lost 8-2 as the pitching slipped up and the offense took a big step back outside of the ever-impressive Colt Emerson.
But the biggest issue for the team was the defense, which was docked for three errors and looked quite shaky even outside of those official events on the scoresheet. The game served as an example of bad fundamental play across the board and a reason why the team has a losing record in one-run games and just one win after trailing in the seventh. They still have the luxury of playing in the division that they do, but they aren’t forming good habits for the playoffs and the lack of precision has turned what should be a lock in the weakest division in baseball into a 1 ½ game lead over a mediocre Athletics team.
Defensive miscues piled up early, and a would-be clean first became a three-spot for the Nats.
Josh Naylor didn’t have himself a very good game on Saturday, with big misses with the glove and stick. The former came first, with a bad throw in the bottom of the first allowing the Nationals to put together a two-out rally and tack three runs on Luis Castillo.
Cole Young Walks Mets Off; Mariners Win Seventh Straight
A baseball club in Seattle is showing that when it rains, it pours. Through May 24, the team went 7-12 in one-run games and lost four out of five extra-innings contests. Since then, the M’s have won three of each, with all the luck falling their way even in games where they leave quite a lot on the table.
All three of those have been walk-off wins, each from the bat of a different Mariner. Monday’s hero in the end was Cole Young, but unlike the others, there was a notable uniqueness to his hit. During the game, 22 players had plate appearances on Monday night. Four had hit home runs, but other than Young, no hitter had found a patch of green grass or evaded the waiting glove of an opponent.
Mariners manager Dan Wilson smirked as he described his team’s “flair for the dramatic” after the game, the team’s second straight 3-2 10-inning victory. That was certainly an understatement, though the drama started with dueling lineup card moves between the managers.
Seattle tried to play coy with the lineup against the Mets opener, but the visitors got the hurling they sought.
For the first time all year, the Mariners faced a team going with the fabled “opener” strategy, with listed starter Austin Warren being a bullpen arm tasked with beginning the game. That setup has its issues, but so had Manaea; the once-blockbuster signing entered the game with a 5.56 ERA entirely as a relief arm.
Crawford, Rodríguez Log Firsts; Mariners Walk Off Diamondbacks
Friday night began as a game of firsts and ended as such, even if, for a few frames, an uneasy familiarity washed over T-Mobile park.
The Mariners had to scrape, scratch, and battle just to get back to an even .500 record, 29-29. But a win is a win is a win, and the team’s 7-6 extra innings victory was just the same as if it had been the easy ordeal it initially appeared. For five innings, home runs from historic places were putting players in great positions and George Kirby was apparently grooving.
In truth, Kirby was missing danger by the thinnest of margins, and once that tiny bit of tricksy pixie dust dissipated, Arizona’s high-contact bats and eagle eye for the strike zone made Seattle pitchers fight for every blade of grass. One after another fell before the onslaught, conducting an ordered retreat by the skin of their teeth until the tide turned at a most unlikely Mariner with the proverbial morningstar upon his brow.
Homering Mariners set their own records as Seattle powered out to an early lead.
As befits this Mariners team as much as those of other years, all runs scored in regulation innings came on the longball. But these homers - at least those powered before the game became a nailbiter - set personal records for multiple guys on the team. In the end, all three M’s leading the team in homers added to their edge on Friday.
M’s Move Within Striking Distance of Division Lead with Win over A’s
Tuesday night was the first time the 2026 Mariners followed up a win of six or more run differential with a win of three or more run differential. Those benchmarks are largely meaningless in and of themselves, but they showed that the team finally managed to string together two largely complete victories, Tuesday’s a solid 4-1 win.
With a lead in hand for nearly the whole contest, the M’s did well to keep the powerful Athletics lineup off the board and away from any sort of comeback; not once after the first did the hosts have the tying run at the plate. But most of all, the team finally showed life against a side of the mound they have been vexed by for a grueling stretch of time.
The Mariners Jump-started their offense against a debutant Sacramento southpaw.
It’s no secret that the Mariners have been horrendous batsmen against left-handers, coming into the game with a .190/.277/.315 slash line against southpaws going into Tuesday’s game. The A’s sought to exploit this fact with quite the bold move: calling up lefty pitching prospect Gage Jump from Triple-A in order to be able to face the M’s on their weaker side.
Banged Up Mariners’ Bullpen Needs to Weather Mid-May Storm
During a 162-game marathon of an MLB season, there is bound to be some attrition and injuries. It’s a natural part of the game. Every team goes through it. It’s not very often that a specific position group on one team gets hit seemingly all at once with the injury bug.
The Seattle Mariners are currently down three different relievers that they were counting on to get big outs late in games. Flamethrower Matt Brash and lefty Gabe Speier seemingly got hurt on the same day. That means they quite literally are without the two top bullpen arms manager Dan Wilson uses to get through the seventh and eighth innings before the closer Andres Muñoz closes it down in the ninth.
Young Slugs RBI Double, Slaps Two-Run Single in Mariners’ Comeback Win over Twins
A .500 batting average and a .500 on-base percentage. 16 total bases in 22 at-bats. A 1.227 OPS. One home run, two doubles, and eight RBIs.
Those were Cole Young’s hitting stats over the Mariners’ 5-1 road trip to get back to .500 baseball by the end of April. Three of those RBIs came in the Mariners’ 5-3 win in their rubber match against the Minnesota Twins on Wednesday and two were as timely as could be with the M’s down one in the top of the ninth.
What goes up must go down, but the second baseman’s offensive breakout has been the Mariners’ best friend more than once in the young season on plenty of different-color diamonds.
George Kirby kept the Twins to two runs despite a big fourth inning opportunity.
Just like Logan Gilbert on Tuesday, George Kirby didn’t get the defense behind him that he wanted, with uneasy outfield play extending a fourth inning that saw the Twins put a pair of runs on the board and ballooned his pitch count enough to end up nixing the quality start and adding some workload for the Mariners bullpen.
Rodríguez, Naylor, Young Hack Timely Hits as Mariners Mash Minnesota Late
Here’s a stat: Julio Rodríguez has more triple doubles in the city of Minneapolis than Nikola Jokić does in the calendar year 2026.
Well, adding a three-double baseball game into the widely accepted hoops definition of “triple double” allows that to be true. It’s also a testament to the defensive skill of one Rudy Gobert, who has finally and resoundingly managed to convince the world that he is actually good at basketball.
As far as Rodríguez is concerned, his three doubles - the baseball version - set a couple of tables for Seattle and cleared their last, and the center fielder accounted for two runs scored and two others knocked in during the Mariners’ 7-1 victory over the Minnesota Twins.
It wasn’t just Rodríguez, as Josh Naylor and Cole Young offered some timely hits of their own while starter Logan Gilbert wriggled himself out of enough pickles and jams to make some truly unique culinary concoctions, even while only going five innings. The M’s, after all their tribulations to start the season, are a game behind .500.
Logan Gilbert showed a bit of adjustment but still had to Houdini his way out of a five-inning start.
It is often said that pitchers are crazy. Usually, this refers to intensity or the way the staff interacts with the rest of the players, and it is most stereotypically associated with the isolated (and thus mysterious) bullpen.
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