Out Go Vain Mariners Playoff Hopes, In Comes Mammoth Montes Might
For the first time in a half decade, September baseball in Seattle does not mean the tension of a playoff chase. Those chases were vain and doomed more often than not, but the exhilaration and anticipation of the first month of fall is not something that shall grace the cooling confines of T-Mobile Park. With the Mariners seven games back of the division lead after their 10-5 loss on Tuesday with 17 left to go, a team who had once been World Series aspirations now looks upon a wholly lost season.
Just as that fact once again became clear on Tuesday, so did another: Lazaro Montes is one of the strongest batsmen on Earth.
The rookie right fielder hit one of the longest homers in Mariners history in the bottom of the fourth against Rangers starter Cal Quantrill, the second of Montes’ career and the first at T-Mobile Park. The 474-footer was the biggest nuke most of those in attendance had ever witnessed - landing on the concourse beyond center field - but for Montes, it was another Tuesday.
“I got a couple, I think in the Dominican Republic, I have one of the long, long, long, long - more than 500 feet, easy,” Montes said. “This is not the only one; I need to now get another one.”
That moment was the sole consolation for a team that had near everything else go wrong in myriad possible ways.
Bryce Miller fell apart early and left before the end of the fourth.
Before Emerson Hancock sustained an injury late in the year, the team had planned to move Bryce Miller to the bullpen and sport a five-man rotation involving the newly-promoted Kade Anderson.
Hindsight is 20/26: Re-Grading the Mariners’ Offseason Moves
The MLB regular season is heading into a sprint to the finish. There are roughly four weeks left until the playoff picture is set. The Seattle Mariners still have a chance to be in the dance, though those hopes are fading with each loss, including a series-opening defeat at the hands of the lowly Athletics on Thursday.
The Mariners certainly made moves over the offseason to try and capitalize on their trip to the ALCS last year. But fans definitely felt like they could’ve done even more, and the results on the field only have provided more evidence for that argument.
Let’s revisit some of the biggest moves the Mariners made last offseason and see how things played out. Certainly, the benefit of hindsight makes this a little unfair. Some moves that aren’t exactly looking like “A-plus” moves now felt like it back then, in the moment.
“I Was Trying to Be Me”: Lazaro Montes Excels in MLB Debut, M’s Win 9-6
Yordan Alvarez comparisons had long since fallen out of favor for Lazaro Montes, at least in neutral outlets. Although his power was palpable throughout his minor league tenure (he had 38 homers between Double-A and Triple-A between the beginning of the year and his promotion on Sept. 1), his swing-and-miss proclivities were a sharp departure from the imposing contact rates of perhaps the most complete hitter among the current generation.
The jury still doubts that Montes will be sterling Alvarez, while he still has more work to do to prove whether he was called up at the right time. But there’s no disputing that the Mariners’ most recent call-up had one of the best debuts anyone could possibly ask for.
When a slicing fly ball to dead center disappeared into the triangular mass of fans in that particular nook of Fenway Park’s iconic grandstands, Montes became the first Cuban player since Alvarez to homer in his MLB debut. He became the 38th debutant in baseball history to log a least a homer, walk, and two total hits, joining a club inaugurated by “Frosty Bill” Duggleby in 1898 [1].
“I was trying to be me, be myself like they told me and like I learned,” Montes said after the game. “And giving 100% no matter what happens.”
George Kirby Gem Powers Mariners Series Win vs. Phillies
It’s hard to describe how badly George Kirby needed the start he got on Tuesday night. On the other hand, it’s rather easy to describe how badly the Mariners need every win they can get this month and for the rest of the 2026 season.
One win got the M’s to a 64-69 record. Matching their 90-win total from 2025 would require an impossible 26-3 run for the rest of the year, but luckily for the team, they don’t need that. In an embarrassing showing for the sport of baseball itself, 81 wins (17-12 over the rest of the year) would probably get them a division crown; a true heater of, say, 20-9 over the rest of the season would be an easy division clincher.
The other way to look at things is that, even in a year where going .500 probably wins them the division, the Mariners - who had World Series aspirations before the season began - need to put together at least a light heater just to make the playoffs.
The only way ahead is forward, however, and they got one notch closer on Tuesday with their 4-1 victory.
George Kirby reached the eighth, a welcome respite from his recent form.
“George was really the story today,” said Mariners manager Dan Wilson after Tuesday’s game.
Kirby had been lit up from every angle in his previous five outings, giving up six homers and only striking out 13 while walking eight with a 7.13 ERA. This was even with a seven-inning, no-run outing among this stretch, but every other game had seen him get lit up Chicago-style: early and often.
Mariners Strike Back vs. Astros, Remain Barely Breathing in AL Playoff Chase
A cloud of horror hung above the Houston air as the Mariners began their game on Saturday. The team was fresh off a gut-wrenching 10-inning loss where the difference depended on two squibbers that fell away from the Mariners defense before Christian Walker torched an Andrés Muñoz cookie into Galveston.
And yet they came back from the brink on Saturday, with a lockdown start from Emerson Hancock and a lively offense in the unfriendly confines of Daikin Park, winning 10-5 on the heels of what, more than all the others, could be described as “the worst loss of the year”.
“I think we all kind of felt like that was a great ball game last night, and it was more indicative of who we are as a team,” said M’s manager Dan Wilson on Saturday, even in spite of Friday’s loss. “And so, I think in some ways, it felt like, yes, we didn’t get the result that we wanted, but we played the way we wanted.”
The Mariners played the way they wanted to on Saturday, and this time, they got just the result they needed.
The Mariners offense went to task with runners on, scoring 10 runs despite just one homer.
Seattle’s offense has depended on the home run for years, and since the start of 2025, around half of all their runs have been scored that way. When Saturday’s game began, the team had a .718 OPS with runners in scoring position since the start of 2025, the seventh-worst in baseball.
Despite their aforementioned bullpen disaster, the team’s performance with runners in scoring position on Friday was commendable, as they went 4-for-12 and scored all seven runs without hitting a home run. That trend continued against the admittedly subpar Astros pitchers on Saturday; the Mariners scored 10 runs while going 7-for-17 with runners on second or third.
“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.
Mariners Offense Continues Slumber, Wastes Strong Logan Gilbert Start against Rays
The cathartic excitement of 45 seconds prior meant nothing as a 39,468-strong crowd saw Josh Naylor take the final pitch of the game for strike three, capping off a 2-1 loss and the Mariners’ 11th defeat in their past 16 games. Those fans booed relentlessly, their patience broken by the continued ineptitude of the offense.
Logan Gilbert had hurled well for Seattle, going deep into the seventh inning, but thanks to the lack of batting, it didn’t matter. The M’s barely avoided the third shutout in four games, and though they managed a run at the very end, it was still just the fifth run since the trade deadline: a stark reminder that the struggles the team had were due to the shortcomings of the stars.
Seattle went scoreless for most of the game, helpless against Rays pitching.
Where Gilbert was effective, Rays starter Drew Rasmussen was brilliant. Or perhaps the Mariners offense was once again lethargic; in truth, it was probably both.
Looking for any way to wake up the sluggish bats, Mariners manager Dan Wilson shook up the lineup. Taylor Ward led off the game with Cole Young batting second and Julio Rodríguez batting fifth. It didn’t work. Ward - whose struggles at T-Mobile Park continued in his fourth game with the M’s - went 0-4 with two strikeouts, while Young’s one hit didn’t come with anyone on base.
Seattle’s chances were relatively few and far between. Rodríguez knocked a one-out single and stole second before Naylor walked to put two men on. Brendan Donovan struck out and Cal Raleigh walked in turn to load the bases, but with Colt Emerson at the plate, Rasmussen knew what to do.
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:
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.
Mariners’ Meandering Losses to Reds Leave Team Shrinking Breathing Room
On March 31, 2026, the Mariners lost their sixth game of the season and fell to a .500 record. The team did so again on July 21, and in the 111 days between, they performed that same act thrice (June 20 and 25, July 9). Five times in between those days (April 3 and 29, May 29, June 29, and July 19), the M’s did the opposite, winning a game to get back to an even record.
Before the season, the team was held as one of the best squads in the American League. According to FanGraphs, they went into Wednesday’s matinee with the second-highest chance to win the World Series of any American League team, only behind the Yankees.
But the experience for the Mariners in 2026 has been a dreary cycle of drought and drenching. They get a set of wins and then the foot goes off the gas. They lose a bunch, struggle a bunch, and then get a cathartic burst of energy that sets them off for some wins. Rinse and repeat: 63% of the way through the season, they won half and lost half.
Wednesday wasn’t encouraging. Once again - this time by a score of 5-3 - the Mariners fell below .500, having lost the following two games of their series against the Reds to turn what could have been a momentum-bringing homestand into yet more water-treading.
Tuesday’s loss had been a little more of an encouraging one, with good at-bats during most of the game - other than clutch situations, as has been depressingly common with the team - and some good defensive plays by the Reds keeping Mariners runs off the board. But a mystifying decision by skipper Dan Wilson to put Michael Rucker in ended in a ninth-inning homer for Cincinnati and the complete dissipation of the team’s energy.
Both games were winnable, but the team plainly lacked the killer instinct to put the Reds away. Seattle is now 52-53; they would have to go 38-19 over the rest of the year just to match their win total from 2025. In more immediate terms, the losses continue their gradual, brick-by-brick immurement in the divisional race.
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.
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 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.
Cole Young, George Kirby Blast Angels 6-2, Give Mariners Much-Needed Boost
The Mariners haven’t clawed their way out of the hole they dug over half a month in June. They are still a half game back in the AL West as the Rangers have forced them into a raise-or-fold situation.
But they began to dig a path on Monday, winning a game they needed to win and returning to a .500 record. They finally had some extra base hits and held a good lead - with mammoth homers off of Angels pitching - while George Kirby roared to life in a super-quality, near-complete outing. When Jose A. Ferrer worked through a light jam to complete the game in the ninth, Seattle walked away with a 6-2 win and the seeds of a new outlook on the season.
George Kirby gutted out an eight-inning start, moving to fourth all-MLB in innings pitched.
Coming off three straight quality starts, Kirby had been on something of a hot streak going into Monday’s game. But due to a lack of offense on the other side in these starts, Kirby had lost two of these three outings. The Mariners’ hitters woke up on the other side on Monday, giving him a win, but Kirby put in one of his best outings all year as he found legions of grounders from free-swinging Angels bats.
Things didn’t start off super well, however, as Kirby leaked a heater over the middle of the plate to Halos leadoff guy Zach Neto for a double. Denzer Guzman quickly chopped a ball off Josh Naylor’s glove and the visitors had a run on the board.
The Halos didn’t follow up on that run as Nolan Schanuel grounded into a double play two pitches later, the second of 12 ground balls from Angels bats. What could have been a crooked first inning had Kirby let his guard down became a meager single run for the visitors. After the game, the M’s hurler talked about his attitude in those situations and the way he needs to approach things when the game begins to go against him.
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.
Cole Young’s Hometown Game-Winner Marks Early Career Highlight, M’s Win 3-2
Neither Pittsburgh nor Seattle sit directly beside an ocean (though Puget Sound of course connects quite nicely to the Pacific and gives the Emerald City a strong oceangoing port), yet these teams cleared the decks for their first of three sea battles on Tuesday night.
It was a low-scoring affair, but the Mariners’ two cannonballs were enough to seal the deal as they came out ahead 3-2. The one homer had special significance for Cal Raleigh, as it was his first big fly since returning from the IL, but it was the second that shone brightest: Seattle’s own Yinzer flipped the score from a Mariners deficit to a Mariners lead.
Triumphant homecoming is one of humanity’s oldest seagoing motifs, but with a 22-year-old hitting three homers in a month for the second time in his career, the game had more to do with the beginning of Young’s odyssey than its end.
Cole Young blasted a go-ahead homer in his Pittsburgh homecoming.
Going into Tuesday, the Mariners were tied with the Twins for the second-worst winning percentage (.094) when trailing a game at the beginning of the seventh inning, having won three of 32 such contests. The only teams worse in this regard (the Giants, Angels, Guardians, Astros, Rangers, and Royals) had a combined 212-261 record and .448 winning percentage.
For comparison, the two teams FanGraphs projects as more likely than the Mariners to win it all (the Yankees and Dodgers) have a combined .196 winning percentage when entering the seventh inning in a deficit. The Brewers, Braves, Phillies, and Rays - the next four teams down after the M’s on FanGraphs’ projections - had a combined .227 winning percentage in games where they entered the seventh inning losing.
And when the top of the seventh began on Tuesday, the M’s trailed 2-1, marking the 33rd time they had entered that inning with a deficit in the season. Pirates starting pitcher Mitch Keller had thrown just 72 pitches, the M’s struggles continuing with the bat as they didn’t break up his efficiency or get many runs across.
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.
‘Just When You Think You’ve Seen it All’: Blissful Mariners Take 6-5 Thriller in Baltimore
“This game’s put years on my life,” said Mariners catcher Mitch Garver after the team’s 6-5, 10-inning victory.
The 35-year-old catcher seemingly left it ambiguous as to whether “this game” referred to the night’s win (one more claustrophobic than a closed-up cave) or whether he meant baseball itself, but in any case, Tuesday’s might be the unlikeliest win the M’s have scratched across yet.
Where Víctor Robles and Jose A. Ferrer failed the Mariners on Tuesday night, Ryan Bliss and Nick Davila saved them. Where Mitch Garver’s lack of a challenge in the bottom of the first led to an Orioles run, his A-plus showing over the remaining nine innings allowed his team to take the win.
The victory required incredible plays from Patrick Wisdom and from a somewhat out-of-position Cole Young. It required the weakest arms in the Mariners bullpen to log two clean combined innings and give some rest for their weary companions. Perhaps most of all, it required grinding, gutsy, going-all-out play from a guy who had played in two MLB games in the previous 365 days.
And it required a man on barely four hours of sleep to make the biggest, most stressful pitches of his life. Isolating the only hero from the course of Tuesday’s game would be a task harder than those that befell both Davila and Bliss. But these tasks were not only reserved for the final innings.
Logan Gilbert put together an unlikely quality start despite being at 58 pitches through two.
Despite a 3.79 ERA going into Tuesday’s game, M’s starter Logan Gilbert has had his share of five-and-dive outings with batters fouling off good pitches and laying off tough filth. Much of it had been due to predictable sequencing, though that issue has been less apparent in May than it was in March and parts of April. The O’s stretched him thin over the first two innings, and with all of four available relievers in the bullpen, there wasn’t much room for inefficiency.
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.
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