Rapid Reaction: M’s Arms Excel Again; Raleigh, Polanco Produce Enough for 3-1 ALCS Game 1 Win
TORONTO, Canada — Coming off a 15-inning marathon, with their most rested starter still on just three days of rest, it didn’t appear likely that the Mariners were going to take the first game in Toronto. But as so often happens in the postseason, good pitching triumphed against good hitting, and Seattle drew first blood in their ALCS against the Blue Jays.
Some in the Mariners lineup, like Jorge Polanco, drew on a well of playoff experience. Others, such as Bryce Miller, made a stab at postseason excellence for the very first time. But they all combined to get the Mariners one step closer to the promised land.
Bryce Miller sails through rough first-inning waters to deliver a mammoth six innings of one-run ball.
Many across the North American continent (including myself to a degree, I must admit) wrote off Bryce Miller’s ability to deal smoke on short rest in Game 1. His ERA (5.68), FIP (5.17), and expected ERA (5.29) were all massive declines from his 2024 year.
Twin vices have haunted Mariners starter Bryce Miller throughout the 2025 season: walks and home runs. At the very least, these issues have had a pattern of alternation over the course of the season—the bulk of the walks came before his midseason injury and the bulk of the home runs came for him afterwards.
A season to forget for Miller seemed to continue quite early Sunday night, as his very first pitch saw nothing but George Springer’s bat and the dark side of the blue fence in right field. The Jays’ early 1-0 lead threatened to become a chasm as Miller walked two of the following three batters, and a team that had scored 9.25 runs per game in the ALDS had the opportunity to go out to a big lead in front of their home crowd. By this point, nearly everyone had written Miller off.
Bryce Miller didn’t write back.
Even though it was a festival of hard contact for the rest of the inning, the Jays only found some outfield gloves. With the first frame taking 27 pitches, however, it was looking very likely that the team would have to call on Emerson Hancock for a good chunk of the middle innings.
Miller’s 2024 version of himself took over from that point on. He located his stuff well enough to use the Blue Jays’ aggressiveness against them, getting through the second on seven pitches, the third and fourth on eight each, and the fifth on 11. Miller was mixing pitches throughout, with the two-seamer and slider complementing his four-seamer and splitter, all while his sweeper and curveball made a couple of appearances.
Another Blue Jay finally reached base in the sixth inning on a four-pitch walk, prompting Mariners pitching coach Pete Woodworth to come out to the mound. Alejandro Kirk flew out to end the sixth inning, finishing off a shutdown line of six innings pitched, one run, and three strikeouts, while containing all three of his walks on the basepaths.
Cal Raleigh, perhaps, was the only one in Rogers Centre who hadn’t discounted Miller in the bottom of the first. During a mound meeting in the first, Raleigh had told Miller to “trust his stuff” as the Jays were banging on the door, and Seattle’s hurler made the pitches to get out of it before dotting the zone with everything he had for five more frames.
Miller’s lockdown outing allowed the Mariners to scrape together a close victory against Toronto’s offensive juggernaut, and it was as impressive as it was unexpected.
Cal Raleigh hits a game-tying home run in the top of the sixth and begins a go-ahead rally.
The man all of Canada had circled on the Mariners’ roster going into the ALCS was Cal Raleigh. Seattle’s catcher has torn Toronto to shreds over his career, with a 1.016 OPS and 10 home runs in 24 career games against the Blue Jays. His first-inning single to right had not amounted to anything, but since then, no other Mariner had reached base. Gausman, like Miller, had found a groove from the second inning forward, taking advantage of a lineup that seemingly couldn’t differentiate the splitter from the heater as it came out of the hand.
In the playoffs, one mistake can be all she wrote. Gausman got two strikes on Raleigh and went for a splitter at the base of the zone, a move he had executed to perfection all game. But instead of dropping off the face of the earth, it stayed near the knees. Raleigh’s eyes lit up as he put nothing but wood on the baseball, sending a 420-foot no-doubter over the right field fence.
It was a new ballgame in the blink of an eye, Toronto’s perennial bugbear back in force to give them yet another headache. Gausman was unable to recover, falling behind Rodríguez early on and delivering a free pass on five pitches. Blue Jays manager John Schneider gave Gausman the hook and brought in the left-handed Brendon Little.
Jorge Polanco gives the Mariners the lead in the sixth and extends it in the eighth.
Mariners second baseman Jorge Polanco cemented a comeback season for the ages with his 15th-inning heroics on Friday night, and to Seattle’s joy, he brought his clutch performances with him to Toronto. Rodríguez got to second on a wild pitch from Little, who simultaneously fell behind Polanco. Although Little got back to a full count, he gave Polanco a fastball out over the plate that ended up down the left field line. The wild pitch proved pivotal as the Mariners took a one-run lead.
A similar situation presented itself in the eighth inning. Randy Arozarena had led off with a walk and swiped both second and third during Rodríguez’ following free pass. Once again, the contact-hitting Polanco found a hole in the defense and produced a run out of a single, bringing home Arozarena and giving Seattle an insurance run.
Over Polanco’s 12-year career, he has played in more postseasons than most of the Mariners lineup, facing the Yankees and Astros twice each and notching his only previous playoff win against the Blue Jays. Although his previous postseasons had been rather pedestrian, the experience surely gave him the strength of nerves to keep cool in the big moments Seattle has faced over six total playoff games in 2025.
The bullpen shuts the door on Toronto to finish out the Mariners’ first victory in any ALCS game since Oct. 20, 2001.
Miller’s six innings and the team’s late lead gave the Mariners bullpen a familiar situation: closing out a win. Dan Wilson turned to Gabe Speier, Matt Brash, and Andrés Muñoz for an inning each, and all three pitched perfect innings as there was little but a whimper at the end of the game for Toronto’s high-powered offense.
The Blue Jays, just as they had in the final five innings of Miller’s start, fell victim to their own aggressiveness, finishing their post-Springer homer 1-28 streak with more groundouts and more weak flyouts. After putting up an average exit velocity of 100.1 miles per hour in the first inning, the home squad only posted a 86.9 miles per hour average exit velocity from the second inning onward.
When the final out was caught, it marked the first win of an ALCS game for the Mariners since Oct. 20, 2001, and just their sixth such win in team history. The job is nowhere close to being finished for Seattle; two out of the previous three times they made it to the ALCS, they won the first game—yet they have never won the series. But the team is three wins away from their very first World Series berth, and that excitement will not go away until the last strike is called.
