Crawford, Rodríguez Log Firsts; Mariners Walk Off Diamondbacks
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Seattle Mariners shortstop J.P. Crawford (3) tosses his bat after hitting a 2-run home run against the Arizona Diamondbacks during the fifth inning at T-Mobile Park. Image credit: Steven Bisig/Imagn Images [/caption]
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.
Going down the list, the three Mariners with the most homers after Friday are as follows: Luke Raley (12), Julio Rodríguez (11), and J.P. Crawford (9).
Of those three, perhaps only Rodríguez would have been expected preseason. Raley, while powerful, is a platoon bat, and even in 2024 it took him until August 2 to hit a dozen blasts.
But the most surprising was Crawford: the most home runs he ever hit in a year was 19 in 2023. The next-most was 12 in 2025. Those were the only two times he ever hit 10 blasts in a season. He’s now on pace for 22 in 2026. And these homers typically come in the summer when things heat up; the most he had had on May 29 in years past has been four.
Whatever is behind this unexpected power surge, the M’s benefited from a first in Crawford’s career: he hit two home runs in the same game. The first bomb was in the first at-bat the M’s had all day, with Arizona starter Zac Gallen sending him a high fastball on a 3-1 count that the batsman was all over. Seattle led 1-0.
Crawford’s other tool for the Mariners, his walks, came into play between his two homers. That is, after all, something that has been a factor in his performance long before his sudden power surge. He led the American League in walks in 2023, and his 14.2% walk rate going into the game was the 12th highest in the majors. He battled with Gallen in the bottom of the third, fouling off some good pitches from the visiting hurler before taking the free pass on the eighth pitch of the appearance.
It was time for another first. Despite a notable power stroke, with 122 home runs across his career to that point, Julio Rodríguez hadn’t ever hit nine homers in a calendar month.
That changed on the third pitch of Rodríguez’ at-bat, with a slider falling in the bottom of the zone and the center fielder putting a mammoth swing on it. Although it left at just a 16 degree angle - even hard hits at that angle have become home runs just 0.7% of the time in the StatCast era - the ball kept flying on a frozen rope and landed in the bullpen. The M’s were up 3-0.
For whatever reason, Crawford was on Gallen like a hawk. The Diamondback hurled a 2-2 changeup right on the paint of the low outside edge, but Crawford torched one deep to center field for his second home run.
But the path to victory would require much more than that.
George Kirby had a good five innings yet allowed Arizona back in the game in the sixth.
For much of the early game, it appeared like Kirby could go seven. Although he wasn’t getting a ton of strikeouts, he was forcing the Diamondbacks to hit weak fly balls and grounders as they couldn’t quite square up his advantageous two-strike pitches.
Kirby got some assistance from his defense in the first inning, as Cole Young stabbed a soft liner well to his left and caught the ball after it bounced upwards off his mitt before tossing to first for an inning-ending double play. But for most of the outing, the Diamondbacks stuck out some defensive swings and wound up slapping weak outs into the field or watching as an unexpected pitch flew by them.
Arizona had a heap of unproductive innings, stymied by a mix of four-seamers and sweepers. With hardly any changeups, curves, or cutters, there wasn’t enough mix to truly bury the visitors, but outs are outs and Kirby created a lot of them, even as Diamondbacks saw his movement enough to create contact. Just once in the first five did one of these swings do damage, when Geraldo Perdomo corked a solo homer down the line.
But these slap hits began to fall through in the bottom of the sixth. Corbin Carroll shot a cutter up in the zone right back to center field before Perdomo, even though he was on the back foot against the middle-middle sweeper, fought it the other way for a double that put runners on second and third with one out. Kirby battled with Gabriel Moreno and got to a 1-2 count against the D-Backs cleanup man, but he missed high with a heater and Moreno was all over a sweeper below the zone, whacking the ball deep into left center for a two-run double.
That was it for Kirby. Dan Wilson, seeing a roaring 100 mile an hour-plus double rocked off his starter, went to reliever Matt Brash to shut down the visitors.
Matt Brash entered shakily and the Diamondbacks tied it in the sixth, but Luke Raley gave the M’s a slim lead in the bottom half.
Friday’s game was Brash’s 17th appearance, and going into it, he hadn’t given up a single run all season. Moreno at second was Kirby’s, but with one out, the M’s were counting on him to shut down the frame and keep Seattle up by two.
Brash got the first two pitches over the plate against Adrian Del Castillo, but as he began to nibble and look for a whiff, the Diamondback stiffened up and spat on four straight pitches, getting aboard as the tying run. This had been a theme even against Kirby - that the visiting batsmen tracked each pitch excellently, even against pristine movement; this was especially true when it came to east-west action - but with the starter out of the game and Brash not getting close chases, something was bound to give.
After a single moved everyone up a station and packed the sacks, Ildemaro Vargas fell behind 1-2, and it looked like Brash was back on top of the game. But even though Vargas shanked a slider in the zone, Brash hadn’t gotten the swing and miss he needed, and the force out at second still allowed a run to score. Jose Fernandez, the next man up, was all over an up-and-in sinker for the game-tying single. Yet another walk loaded the bases once more.
Brash summoned the last of his strength, approaching 20 pitches as he battled with Ketel Marte. He worked ahead 0-2 but, just as had happened with Castillo, he missed by a couple of hairs a couple of times and Marte didn’t bite. It took a pitch in the zone (but an unhittable one) in order for Seattle to get out of the inning: Brash got the strikeout on a painted slider down and in.
That tied game didn’t last very long. Brandon Pfaadt, in to relieve Gallen to start the sixth, got one out quickly but hung a changeup to Raley. With one pitch, the trio of Mariners home run leaders completed their action, and Seattle was up 6-5.
Arizona scrapped with Mariners relievers for every last out, finally tying it against Andrés Muñoz.
Wilson’s plan for the rest of the game was simple: use three quality arms to get three scoreless innings and win. Arizona wasn’t going to make that plan easy, however, with southpaw Jose A. Ferrer getting two men out before giving up a hit and being taken out for righty Eduard Bazardo, that move in response to Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo bringing in right-handed platoon bat Nolan Arenado into the game.
Bazardo got the out, but with an inning left between him and the ninth, he would have to go back out for another frame. The patient D-Backs chased exactly one of his 17 pitches that inning, that being a one out line drive double by the eight-hole Fernandez. Bazardo faced Marte as his last batter, but he couldn’t find the edges and walked him on six pitches.
The lefty-lefty matchup play came right from the pages of everyone’s book. Carroll, whose career .789 OPS against left-handers is quite a bit lower than a career .866 mark against righties, was at the dish. Although he has reverse splits this year, the M’s went with their tendency and the historical matchup, bringing in Gabe Speier to face the same-sided batter.
Unlike everything else beyond the fifth, Speier made it simple and quick, fanning Carroll on three pitches.
It was back to regular programming in the ninth. Andrés Muñoz came on for the save, but as he fell behind Perdomo 3-1, each pitch was a potential landmine. Muñoz worked back into it with a called strike and a foul, but he gave in and plated a sinker that wound up a foot or two over Cole Young’s reach at second.
Moreno, up next, remained all over a 1-2 slider and whacked it the other way for a single, and with Muñoz out of goose, he plunked Nolan Arenado on the first pitch to load the bases with nobody out. In order for the M’s to win, it would either have to be a walk-off or a no-out bases-loaded miss by one of the premier contact teams in the league.
Muñoz hasn’t done well with runners all year long - inherited or faulted - and the day of firsts did not extend to the ninth inning. A lone strikeout provided some hope, but as Vargas dribbled a ball into the infield grass, it proved too difficult a play for Josh Naylor to make and the tying run came home. It was the fourth blown save of the season for the closer. Seattle didn’t score in the bottom half, so it was on to extra innings with the bullpen nearly out of arms.
Cooper Criswell and J.P. Crawford put together a masterful half inning in the top of the 10th, allowing the walk-off to finish things.
The big five leverage arms were all used up as the 10th began. Cooper Criswell entered the game with a 3.33 ERA and 3.97 FIP, but four of his previous five appearances had resulted in at least a run for Seattle’s opponents and he hadn’t ever kept the ghost runner from scoring in his few career extra innings appearances.
To make matters worse, he would have to face the top of the Arizona order: Marte, Carroll, and Perdomo. But one by one, the M’s inched closer to keeping a clean frame. Marte weakly grounded out to Crawford, moving ghost runner Tommy Troy to third. The infield pulled themselves in, betting everything on being in the right places at the right time.
Carroll torched a cutter up the middle. Crawford, whose defensive decline has been quite notable all year, had the tiniest of windows to react. He dove towards the grounder and snared it in his glove, coming up just as massively with the leather as he had with the bat. The shortstop stared Troy down and kept the runner at third before throwing over to first for the second out.
When Perdomo grounded out to second, the M’s found themselves with the winning run 180 feet away. But they would still have to knock home the ghost runner in the bottom half.
Diamondbacks reliever Juan Morillo threw one very hittable pitch to Rodríguez, but unfortunately for Seattle, it was the first pitch of the bottom half of the inning, and the center fielder was taking all the way on the middle-middle slider. Morillo then intentionally walked Naylor to get to the historically more strikeout-prone Randy Arozarena.
This was the wrong call on Arizona’s part. Naylor’s weakness all year has been grounding balls to the right side, resulting in an AL-leading nine double plays grounded into. By going to Arozarena instead of walking Rodríguez and trying to get two there, the visitors hamstrung themselves.
Arozarena swung on a 2-2 pitch a foot low and away, as was the Diamondbacks’ plan. But the outfielder shot it into the right center field gap, just out of the reach of center fielder Ryan Waldschmidt, and despite all that had come in their way, the Mariners won 7-6.
On Deck
All of that brought Seattle to .500 for the first time since April 29. Despite four straight wins and five straight games with 10 or more hits, the Mariners still have work to do to build on the momentum. Simply being above water is their next goal as they seek to put their early struggles behind them.
Bryan Woo will be pitching on Saturday night for Seattle, while the Diamondbacks hurler will be Ryne Nelson. With Arizona’s high-contact approach, Woo will have to be on his A-game in order to keep them off his fastball.
