Rangers Outlast Mariners 6-4 in 11-Inning Battle
SEATTLE, Wash. – Two steps forward, one step back. The Seattle Mariners dropped the third game of their big series against the Texas Rangers on Saturday, as the Seattle bullpen was the first to blink in an 11-inning thriller.
Throughout the day, minor things were falling Texas’ way. Mariner starter Luis Castillo had a shorter outing than newly-acquired Rangers pitcher Merrill Kelly, which allowed the Rangers greater flexibility in the bullpen. Scoring position chances at the plate for some of the biggest names in the Mariners order ended up empty, as neither Eugenio Suárez nor Cal Raleigh recorded a hit in 10 combined at-bats.
It was knotted after 10 innings, but in the 11th, Mariners manager Dan Wilson went to the wrong arm. Texas pushed a couple guys across the plate and won the game 6-4, making Sunday’s series finale a critical one.
Higashioka Strokes Two for Texas
The last time Merrill Kelly had faced the Seattle Mariners, he was pitching for the Diamondbacks on June 9. In that start, he shut down the Mariner offense, striking out seven and walking just two as he went six scoreless.
For five innings on Saturday, Kelly continued to dominate the Mariners, but a lot of that was on the Seattle Mariners. For whatever reason, nearly every Mariner hitter kept fishing for changeups low and out of the zone. A lot of these pitches weren’t even particularly close and many of these whiffs came on zero-strike or one-strike counts.
The M’s have had a fair few games with dead bats, and it’s often a result of really bizarre swing decisions. A lot of the time, to be fair, it’s because the pitchers just have their number when it comes to mixing it up and not letting them know what comes next. But when a pitcher is on a really low pitch count and it’s a 0-0 pitch tailing off the plate? That’s very preventable.
Some of Seattle’s hitters were making better decisions, however. Eugenio Suárez swung at a lot of the right times – and was fooled all the same by some really good pitch selections by Kelly.
Meanwhile, Castillo was blowing the doors off hitters in the first two innings, but struggled as the third began. His spots on the corners were being missed, both off the plate and for meatballs out over it.
Rowdy Tellez, of all people, got an infield hit to lead off the inning with a single. Castillo got to 2-2 against Kyle Higashioka, but his attempt to dot the top of the zone with a heater went out over the plate – and into the Mariners bullpen. 2-0, Texas.
Castillo’s struggles continued with a walk to Alejandro Osuna. Corey Seager put together an incredible at-bat an out later, fouling off five good pitches before plunking a ball into right field and moving Osuna to third base. Marcus Semien was a quick out, but Castillo fell behind Adolis García 3-0.
Three times, Castillo dotted the corner. A take and two foul balls worked the count full. Castillo went for the top of the zone, but the ball didn’t rise like he hoped. The fastball was going right down the middle. García took a mighty hack – and was late. Strike three to get out of the inning with limited damage.
Although he worked through the fourth, Castillo’s pitch count had skyrocketed, and he came out of the game with just one out in the fifth. Carlos Vargas came on in relief and got some help from Cole Young, who turned a would-be Corey Seager base hit into a double play. The top of the sixth went quietly for Texas, but the visitors still had a lead.
M’s Knot Game in Sixth
For five frames, Kelly was on his way to turning this article into a piece about scorekeeping in the MLB. J.P. Crawford changed that.
Leading off the sixth, Crawford showed a key piece of his game: patience. He knew that with Kelly entering the inning on just 54 pitches, the Mariners couldn’t afford for him to take chances on first-pitch changeups like the rest of the order had been doing. The first pitch was a curveball that ran into the zone, the second a fastball away.
Kelly made his first mistake, throwing a fastball right down the middle. Crawford turned on the ball and cracked a line drive down the line in right. The ball drifted back, took a bounce off the warning track, and went into the seats for a ground rule double.
Although Cole Young flew out, Randy Arozarena continued the rally with a single drilled into center, moving Crawford to third.
Seattle’s first run came on a balk. You heard that right, a balk. Kelly was clearly occupied with the runner at first, throwing over once to hold Arozarena. But the second time he did that, he did it … First base umpire John Libka immediately reacted, pointing Arozarena to second and Crawford to the plate as the score moved to 2-1 Texas.
Cal Raleigh’s strikeout got Kelly one step closer to getting out with a lead still intact. But Julio Rodriguez blasted a liner into right field. It was hard-struck and right to García, but it took a weird hop off the ground and bounced off García’s glove. The Ranger right fielder twisted back and saw the ball roll on the grass between him and Lankford in center.
Arozarena easily scored and Rodriguez stood up at second. The game was knotted at 2-2. Josh Naylor hit an easy grounder to Kelly, but he seemingly thought there were less than two outs and threw to third despite having the easy out at first. Not only would Rodriguez have been safe there, but the throw was high anyway and fell out of Josh Smith’s glove.
Rangers manager Bruce Bochy decided that was enough and pulled Kelly from the game.
Suárez came to the plate, serenaded by 37,226 fans at T-Mobile Park. He struck out on six pitches. But the game was now tied.
Key Opportunity Wasted
After Eduard Bazardo worked a clean top of the seventh, the bottom half became a golden opportunity for the Mariners to take their first lead of the game. With Danny Coulombe on the bump, Dominic Canzone hit a single into center field to lead off and Dylan Moore came on to pinch-run. Mitch Garver followed that up with a walk.
Crawford came to the plate with two men on and nobody out. Dan Wilson called for a sacrifice bunt and Crawford answered the call beautifully, laying it down along the third base line to move the runners up. Young took another walk to load the bases.
The top of the order was up with one out and the bases loaded, starting with Arozarena. Seattle’s left fielder took two massive swings, eliciting some “oohs” from the crowd – but took strike three on the inside corner.
Raleigh, in the midst of a Platinum Sombrero (more on that later), had his best overall at-bat of the game. Coulombe’s first two pitches were balls. A cutter came right down the middle – and Raleigh fouled it off. Coulombe began to pound the lower inside corner, getting another strike and ceding another ball. Two more foul balls followed.
Coulombe fired a fastball at the same spot. Raleigh likely was expecting a cutter that would dash inward off the plate. But it was a four-seamer. No movement. Strike three called. A golden opportunity became a Golden Sombrero (it was Raleigh’s fourth strikeout).
In a game where a lot of little things added up to a loss in the standings, this was one of the biggest.
Any run in that inning would have won the game for the Mariners. Gabe Speier twirled a rapid eighth, and although Dylan Moore made a two-out not-error in right that resulted in Wyatt Langford reaching second base, Andrés Muñoz worked a scoreless ninth. But the M’s couldn’t get anything going in the bottom halves of those innings, so it was off to extras.
10th Inning Stalemate
Matt Brash went out to pitch the top of the tenth. The automatic runner went there with him, initially Rowdy Tellez, but Ezequiel Duran came on to pinch-run at the beginning of the inning.
Higashioka led off. Brash attacked him to get to 0-2, but Higashioka didn’t bite on an airmailed fastball or a slider away. Brash’s 2-2 slider was expertly placed, but Higashioka stuck his bat out and blooped a single into center field. Duran scored from second. Osuna singled and Smith bunted the runners over. Wilson called for an intentional walk on Seager.
Semien hit a ground ball to Crawford, which is what the M’s wanted. However, it was weakly struck. With no time for a double play to hold the Rangers’ lead to one run, Crawford got the out at first while Higashioka scored.
Brash pounded the space away from the zone against García, but threw one fastball high that mixed up his expectations and caused him to whiff on a following slider away.
The Rangers needed a rally to get two in the top half. The Mariners needed one swing.
With Cole Young on second as the automatic runner, Robert Garcia – fresh off a blown save the previous day – grooved 96 miles an hour with no movement right down the middle to Randy Arozarena.
The swing Arozarena put on the ball was a thing of beauty; the boom of the bat was a firecracker. The ball left the wood at 111.8 miles an hour and soared into the upper deck in left center field to knot the game at 4-4.
Cal Raleigh Wears Wrong Platinum Clothing Item
Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh has not looked his best coming out of the All-Star Break. Granted, he still has four home runs over 15 games, but his post-break OPS after Saturday’s contest is .681.
Saturday was about the worst he has looked during this rough stretch. In the first, he took some bad swings at pitches off the plate away, seemingly missing the fading action on Kelly’s arsenal. It was even worse in the fourth, as he weakly whiffed on three pitches that were well off the plate. A 2-2 fastball at the bottom of the zone froze him in the sixth and, with two outs and the bases loaded in the seventh, he took a 3-2 pitch low and in for strike three.
Raleigh went up to the plate in the tenth immediately after Arozarena’s game-tying shot. He took a massive hack at a slider on the inside corner for strike one. A ball came next, followed by another massive swing at a changeup away. Strike two. Two more balls made the count full.
Garcia left a slider out over the plate on the next pitch. Raleigh swung once more – and came up empty to secure a Platinum Sombrero, the first of his career. Despite a two-out single from Naylor, the M’s didn’t get the walk-off in the bottom of the tenth, meaning more free baseball was coming.
Legumina?
There were a few arguable decisions by Dan Wilson here, but only one bad decision. Perhaps he should have used Brash in the ninth and Muñoz in the tenth instead of the other way around. Perhaps he shouldn’t have had Crawford bunt in the seventh or put in Moore as a pinch-hitter. But those were all sensible calls – the focus should really be on the decision that may have cost the M’s the game.
In the top of the eleventh, with Pederson, Langford, and Duran due up to bat, Dan Wilson put in Casey Legumina to pitch instead of Caleb Ferguson.
This was unabashedly a bad call. Wilson clarified after the game that he made the call based on handedness, as Joc Pederson was due up but followed by two righties in Wyatt Langford and Ezequiel Duran.
The problem is, the two relievers are separated by a lot more than just handedness.
Legumina came into this game with a 5.23 ERA while Ferguson had a 3.64 ERA. Opposing batters had a .772 OPS in high leverage situations against Legumina and a .730 OPS against Ferguson in the same situations.
Now we talk about Legumina’s saturday struggles. Adolis García was the automatic runner at second and the man at the plate was Pederson, who hit a weak shot into left for a single (and Sam Haggerty promptly came on to pinch-run). Garcia got to third. Legumina left a pitch out over the plate for Langford, who knocked it into right to score García and move Haggerty to third.
Ezequiel Duran hit a very soft liner out to the edge of the infield halfway between first and second. If the infield had been playing at normal depth, it would have been an easy first out. But they were in on the grass, so the ball floated past Young and into right for another single. Haggerty in, Langford to third, 6-4 Rangers.
Legumina managed to get the strikeout on Kyle Higashioka, but that was it for his day as Ferguson came in to put out the fire. That he did, but the Rangers had a two-run advantage. In the blink of an eye, that lead etched itself in the record books with a game-ending Crawford flyout.
Wilson stood by his decision.
“Just felt like that was a spot for [Legumina], and we knew we had [Ferguson] there towards the bottom if we got into the lefties,” Wilson said. “I thought Legumina threw the ball well, but they were able to get some soft contact on him that broke open some holes.”
On Deck
With Saturday’s loss, the Mariners fell to 59-53. They still hold the third wild card spot but are one and a half back of the Yankees and two back of the Red Sox for the other positions. Texas is once again one game back of the Mariners for the third wild card – the chase is not over yet!
The M’s have one final game on Sunday against the Rangers, where they can pull away with either a series win or a series tie. Logan Evans will be on the bump for Seattle while Jacob deGrom will start for Texas.
After that, Seattle will have a much-needed rest day on Monday before a three-game set against the Chicago White Sox and another three-game series against the Tampa Bay Rays to round out the homestand.
