> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.emeraldcityspectrum.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Crawford Completes Comeback with Walk-Off Single, Mariners Best Astros 8-7 - URL: https://www.emeraldcityspectrum.com/seattle-mariners-comeback-crawford-walk-off-astros/ - Published: 2026-04-12T07:49:15.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-08T06:12:03.000Z - Author: Callaghan Bluechel - Tags: News, Analysis, Mariners, J.P. Crawford, Luis Castillo, Casey Legumina, Jose A. Ferrer, Eduard Bazardo, Matt Brash, Andres Munoz, Cal Raleigh, Julio Rodriguez, Josh Naylor, Randy Arozarena, Cole Young, Dominic Canzone, Leo Rivas, Rob Refsnyder, Brendan Donovan \[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="6000"\] ![ Seattle Mariners shortstop J.P. Crawford (3) celebrates with teammates after a game against the Houston Astros at T-Mobile Park. Mandatory Credit: Stephen Brashear-Imagn Images ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1d/f2/1df2f77b-83dd-4bc0-a6d2-6d1bb5df89a3/content/images/2026/10/seattle-mariners-shortstop-j-p--crawford--283-29-celebrates-with-teammates-after-a-game-against-the-houston-astros-at-t-mobile-park--mandatory-credit-3a-stephen-brashear-imagn-images-format-original.jpg) Seattle Mariners shortstop J.P. Crawford (3) celebrates with teammates after a game against the Houston Astros at T-Mobile Park. Mandatory Credit: Stephen Brashear-Imagn Images \[/caption\] “J.P.! J.P.! J.P.!” rang out the chorus of 43,294 happy, exhausted spectators on Saturday night. Perhaps some of the Central Washington students among them (who had a special discount for the game and got some CWU-themed jerseys) were planning on continuing the night on Lower Queen Anne or Capitol Hill; the older and wiser CWU alums in the crowd were probably set to take their modes of transportation home so as to get some shuteye. All of them shared in the electricity of the evening’s end. Mariners shortstop J.P. Crawford hadn’t been part of much of the first two weeks of the season for Seattle, nursing a shoulder injury sustained in Spring Training, and the first five games of his season saw him hit a paltry .118 over 26 plate appearances. “I was going crazy not being able to play,” Crawford told Mariners TV’s Ryan Rowland-Smith after the game. The Mariners shortstop had put together a 1-3 game with two walks during Seattle’s skid-breaking win on Friday, hitting leadoff with Brendan Donovan out of the lineup with an illness. But Saturday night saw him punch through a pair of massive bases-loaded singles to bookend the team’s biggest comeback of the young year to secure an 8-7 win over Houston. Crawford’s electric walk-off wrapped up a game with as many twists as an M. Night Shyamalan flick. At times it seemed like the Mariners had a second win in the bag; at others the Astros looked as dominant as they did in 2019\. But Seattle’s breakthrough offensive adjustment from Friday, once properly remembered, made the difference in the end. The Mariners shortstop summed it best: “Just passing the baton, everyone not trying to do too much,” Crawford said. “I was keeping the line moving.” ### Cal Raleigh homered in the first and Julio Rodríguez knocked his first extra base hit, but the offense went silent for a few innings as Castillo fell apart. Sometimes the first inning sets the tone for the rest of the game. That wasn’t the case on Saturday, as that frame featured a 15-pitch gem from Luis Castillo, with the only preview of what was to come being the Astros hitters failing to bite on his slider. The offense, however, got off to a good start. Crawford worked a leadoff walk and Cal Raleigh jumped on a first-pitch fastball, sending it deep into the right field seats for an early 2-0 lead. Another good omen was Julio Rodríguez getting his first extra base hit of the year, grounding a shot down the left field line. But the tides rapidly turned. Josh Naylor popped out and Randy Arozarena lined into a double play, beginning a groove for Astros starter Lance McCullers that lasted until the fifth. The real punches, however, came from the big Houston bats. Castillo lost some of his fastball control in the top of the second, plating one for Jose Altuve and missing four heaters (three in the same spot about a foot above the zone) to Joey Loperfido, with only a fielder’s choice in between. Trying for the double play, Castillo sent a sinker Cam Smith’s way that ended up in center field for another single, with the run kept off the board only due to Rodríguez’ strong throw home. Yainer Diaz saw a whole bunch of nibbling from the Mariner starter, who seemed to be caroming between too little and too much confidence in his stuff to do the job. The nibbling, after eight pitches and an ABS challenge from Raleigh, got the strikeout and was one out away from leaving the inning without any damage. The wheels promptly fell off the bus. Castillo let a fastball catch far too much of the zone for Taylor Trammell, who launched a three-run double and fully turned the tone of the game to Houston’s favor. With Castillo still in the game, the Astros kept piling on in the third. An isolated home run from Yordan Alvarez - his sixth of the season - was one thing, but Carlos Correa and Joey Loperfido both squared up sliders from the Mariners starter to put runners at second and third. Needing to keep the M’s close, Castillo got locked in a 13-pitch battle with Cam Smith. He generally kept to the outer edge of the plate, going back inside to try and fool him with a fastball but only to meet yet another foul ball. Unfortunately for Seattle, he went back to that slider that the Astros had been seeing well even since the beginning of the game. Smith sent it on a rope to center field, making it 6-2 Houston. And things didn’t get easier in the fourth, with three more hits scoring the Astros’ seventh run and booting Castillo from the game. Casey Legumina came on in relief at that point, cleaning up that frame with a double play. The Astros threatened in the fifth with a single and a double, looking to truly put the game away, but Legumina and the Mariners finally stemmed the bleeding. The efforts of Seattle’s low-leverage reliever to keep the game close were lost in the hitting heroism, but it was a good continuation of his solid beginning to the season, as Legumina still hasn’t given up a run. Yet any further twist would have to come from the offense. ### The Mariners strung together a bunch of hits to tie the game in the fifth and bring life to T-Mobile Park. Hitting at the major league level is physical in a lot of ways: a player’s bat speed, attack angle, how hard they hit the ball, and so on and so forth. But this game is 90% mental, and 90% of what makes great hitters in the Show is their approach at the dish, an approach the M’s seemed to forget early in the year and between the second and the fourth on Saturday. That’s when the Mariners tried to force everything, when they tried to make five runs with one swing. It’s a persistent issue that isn’t going to go away after just one good inning, but the more good innings they get from keeping things small and letting their own elite skills produce the big hits, the more they might learn to keep such a process going. It’s fitting that the bottom of the fifth started with a good piece of hitting from Cole Young. One of the few Mariners to have a consistently solid approach at the dish over the first two weeks of the season, he entered Saturday having reached base in 11 of his 14 games with a .265/.333/.469 slash line. With one out in the inning, Young broke McCullers’ flow with a quick grounder through the right side. Dominic Canzone passed the baton further with a line drive into the right center field gap and Leo Rivas took a free pass to load up the bases. The golden opportunity was small consolation on its own. The M’s were down five runs with an offense that, outside of three games, had been very quiet for over two weeks. There’s a lot to be learned from baseball’s unending statistical revolution, but as to an explanation for the ability to come through in the clutch? Well, given that it’s all mental, looking for a physical reason why some players make the most of their big moments is futile. Crawford, for example, entered Saturday with a .373/.382/.760 slash line in his 89 career bases loaded plate appearances. And Crawford continued his mashing in that situation, pelting a single into left center to bring home two and cut the Astros’ lead to three runs. Houston manager Joe Espada brought the left-handed Steven Okert into the game to face Raleigh, and although he got the out, Raleigh muscled a broken-bat sacrifice fly for another Mariners tally. Discussion about Rodríguez’ propensity for weak first halves will surely not cease with just two great hits - he finished the game with a .172/.262/.241 slash line despite his excellent night - but a rebound has to start somewhere. “Let the game dictate where the ball goes, that’s what I’m working on,” Rodríguez said about his approach to getting back on track. For a player like Rodríguez, this is incredibly sensible. Perhaps most out of anyone on the M’s, he doesn’t need to force a big hit, he can think gap-to-gap and still produce bombs thanks to his tremendous power and lightning bat speed. And as Okert tossed him a 1-2 slider at the bottom of the zone, the Mariners center fielder got the bat to the ball and walloped a deep fly to center. Improbably, the M’s had tied the game. What had looked like a surefire loss just a few innings before had become a brand new ballgame. Results did end up more mixed after the big frame. Rob Refsnyder tried to do too much on a two-out full count fastball down the middle, chopping a routine grounder to Correa in his pinch hit at-bat to send the bottom of the sixth. Raleigh had the right approach on an 0-2 heater over the plate, but it ended up being an inning-ending double play in the seventh. ### Four heavyweight Mariners relievers kept the Astros scoreless for the final innings despite ample chances for the visitors. With a newly knotted ballgame, Mariners manager Dan Wilson brought in the A-team from the bullpen. Jose A. Ferrer went out for the sixth, with the M’s perhaps still vainly trying out the lefty-lefty matchup against Alvarez. Pitching against the Astros DH is like learning a new language (and a lot of other things in life): there’s no secret trick that gets the modern day’s answer to Edgar Martinez out of the inning without any damage. A pitcher must simply beat him, fair and square. Alvarez got the best of Ferrer with a bloop single into left, but despite a long two-out battle with Jose Altuve, he froze the longtime Houston second baseman for strike three. Next in line was Bazardo, but he found an early buzzsaw as Correa doubled and Loperfido singled him to third. Oddly, it was Rodríguez who made a defensive miscue and Raley who saved a run with his glove, as Rodríguez let Correa’s hit get to the wall and Raley kept Correa close to the bag by making it look like he had a beat on Loperfido’s single. Even with the bottom of the order up at the plate, the Astros were going to make Bazardo work for his clean sheet, one batter at a time. Smith took a close 1–2 strike three and challenged, but the ABS review upheld the strikeout, and after Yainer Diaz weakly popped out, the same sequence of 1-2 called third strike and ABS uphold ended the inning with Trammell. Houston returned to their threatening ways in the eighth against Matt Brash. Alvarez scorched a one-out liner deep to right at 111.3 miles an hour off the bat, barely missing a home run by about three feet on his frozen rope double, and Jose Altuve walked a couple of batters later. But a set of easy flyouts and popouts worked Brash out of the frame, keeping the M’s and Astros for another frame. Andrés Muñoz had his turn in the ninth as the specter of extra innings began to loom large. Just like his two predecessors, Muñoz faced an early runner in scoring position, but this one was thanks to the shaky defense behind him. Rivas wasn’t able to keep a handle on a hot shot to third, and although Crawford reacted in time to pump the ball to second to try recover an out, Young became the second Mariner on the play to literally drop the ball. Just like on Friday, Muñoz’ control sputtered out with two away, and he walked the bases loaded for none other than Alvarez. Making matters worse (and his Fernando Rodney impression better), he tossed the mighty slugger two balls to begin the at-bat. Alvarez topped off the Rodney impression with a miracle weak fly ball to left. It was up to the bats to finish the job. ### Crawford capped off the comeback with a walk-off single, tying the M’s and Stros in the standings. With Josh Hader dealing with a biceps injury, the Astros have tapped Bryan Abreu as their ninth inning man. Like much to do with Houston’s arms, that has not gone well. Going into the game, he had given up at least a run in each of his outings and was sporting a terribly janky 19.64 ERA. Abreu showed why as soon as he stepped on the rubber. Over just 3 ⅔ innings up to that point, the Astros’ interim closer had walked seven batters, a whole lot of free passes for a guy that is supposed to close the door. He continued that trend with one out in the ninth, walking Young, a pinch-hitting Donovan, and Rivas to load the bases once more for J.P. Crawford. “(Crawford) is always out there grinding,” Raleigh said about his teammate. “... He’s been a catalyst for us in these last two days, he has had some really big knocks for us.” The biggest of Crawford’s knocks was of course the walk-off single he sent into the outfield. Abreu had put him in an 0-2 hole, but thinking up the middle of the field, Crawford sent a middle-middle fastball far enough to end the game. It’s still very early in the season, a fact that remains just as true as it was when the M’s were battling the depths of offensive ineptitude. But the process from the bats was as good as could be in the fifth and the ninth, and the M’s and Astros are now both tied in the standings … for last place in the AL West, one and a half games out of first. That part of the phrase should remind everyone just how early it is. Seattle will sail forth for two afternoon games to round out the four-game set, searching for their first series win of the young campaign.