Mariners Blast Blue Jays on Independence Day, Still Need Consistency
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Seattle Mariners left fielder Randy Arozarena (56) hits a grand slam home run during the second inning against the Toronto Blue Jays at T-Mobile Park. Mandatory Credit: Stephen Brashear-Imagn Images [/caption]
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.
The raw power of Seattle’s contract-year left fielder is his clearest tool - Arozarena has 20 or more home runs in each year since 2021 - but he has been a much more contact-oriented hitter in 2026, with a career-high (in full seasons) .370 on-base percentage going into Saturday’s game and a batting average that had increased from .238 in 2025 to .280 in 2026. This has meant more singles and doubles but has decreased his home run pace, though it’s worth noting his overall slugging percentage was still higher going into Saturday (.436) than it was in 2025 (.426). All in all, it has been a beneficial trade-off.
That doesn’t mean Arozarena is without the longball, though. Bieber tossed him two sliders to begin the at-bat, but though the first got him to swing and miss, the second didn’t slide nearly enough. Arozarena proceeded to obliterate the baseball, lining it clear over the bullpen in left field. What was a one-run lead became a five-run lead, enough for Gilbert to keep cruising through the majority of the game.
Logan Gilbert was one unlucky bloop away from bringing a perfect game into the eighth.
Gilbert’s only career complete game shutout happened on July 4, 2023, as he kept the San Francisco Giants to five hits and no runs over nine innings and 105 pitches. Three years later, he nearly outdid himself.
They say that perfect games require a combination of luck and incredible defense. In 2012 - the Year of the Perfecto - two perfect-game throwers (Matt Cain and Felix Hernandez) had the notable defensive plays of Gregor Blanco and Eric Thames, respectively, while the third (Philip Humber) had the luck of playing the 2012 Mariners. Early on, it may have appeared in the minds of some that Gilbert was getting the benefit of such luck, though weirdly enough, he himself had it on defense as he knocked a weak chopper forward, recovered, and made an unreal diving throw to first base in the top of the fourth.
“I told Bryce (Miller), you catch it and throw to first and nobody remembers that play,” Gilbert said. “But, you knock it down, you jump and dive and flail, then it starts to look pretty good.”
Gilbert had five strikeouts through those first four frames, and though that by itself isn’t the most noteworthy item, it put the hurler four punchouts away from a full 1,000 for his career. The millennium mark is something just 580 pitchers have achieved in MLB history, though the numbers quickly drop off after that: if he reaches 1,100 by the end of the season, he would share company with 489 other players. Another 100 punchouts would put him in a club with 398 other members.
“I was hoping it would work out today, I usually don’t know where I’m at, but ‘cause I knew it was coming close, I checked just to see,” Gilbert said. “I wanted it to happen at home, I thought it’d be cool. And then with the outing going well, the Fourth and everything today, it was pretty exciting … but I’ll take what I can get, I’m never gonna complain about that one.”
Both the extremely likely millennium and the extremely unlikely perfect game are feats that Gilbert will have to wait another day for. After getting two quick groundouts in the fifth, Jays left fielder Yohendrick Piñango parachuted a ball to shallow center field. It may have been a 71.1-mile an hour hit, but it was perfectly angled to end up in between fielders, and Robles wasn’t able to get to it in time to prevent Toronto’s first hit.
It was also the visitors’ only hit. Gilbert quickly finished the fifth and struck out one batter each in the sixth and seventh, though his pitch count was at 88 by the beginning of the eighth. Dan Wilson let him throw to one batter in that frame, but after a line drive to first, the skipper pulled him from the game and brought in Cole Wilcox for mop-up duty. Gilbert may have been on 91 pitches by that point, but with an 11-0 lead and no perfect game or no-hitter in tow, the M’s probably figured it safer to yank their starter and take the incredible outing they had on less than 100 pitches.
Gilbert leaned heavily on his heater during his outing, with 58 of his 91 pitches being four-seamers. Unlike many times when he goes to his splitter in favorable counts, Gilbert’s second-most common pitch was his slider; the altered arsenal seemed to keep an already-struggling Jays offense off balance.
Despite the 11 runs on Saturday (including a Cal Raleigh homer) the team still lacks consistency.
What good are 11 runs when they are all scored in the same game? The M’s have scored 11 or more runs three times this year, but unlike the first two occasions, the team didn’t need all of those runs on Saturday. They needed some runs on Friday, but they of course went without any scoring at all in that first game of the series.
In any case, the cathartic burst of production continued apace on Saturday well after Arozarena’s grand slam. Arozarena led off the fifth with a walk and Dominic Canzone walloped a two-run shot to push the score to 7-0, three singles in the sixth brought in an eighth run, and as Toronto reliever Tommy Nance hung a slider right in Cal Raleigh’s low-and-in wheelhouse, the catcher smoked a three-run shot well over the right field wall.
Canzone and Arozarena are the two healthy Mariners with an OPS above .800, with Canzone’s slash line at .273/.349/.551 and Arozarena’s now sitting at .287/.376/.453. Beyond them, however, there are three healthy Mariners with an OPS between .700 and .800 - Luke Raley, Colt Emerson, and Cole Young - but two of those three are mired in deep slumps while Young heats up anew. Julio Rodríguez has a .747 OPS but is currently on the seven-day concussion IL.
Josh Naylor is still at a .671 OPS, under .700 since May 10. Raleigh’s OPS is .573 and has been below .700 since April 27. The M’s need real consistency from these hitters in order to prevent the long stretches of lifelessness they have seen during this season. Even with their giant victory on Saturday, they are still two games above .500 and a half game above the Texas Rangers in the AL West.
The M’s have won four of their last five games, but that spell of production is only the beginning of what the team needs to do going forward.
