Cole Young, George Kirby Blast Angels 6-2, Give Mariners Much-Needed Boost
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Seattle Mariners second baseman Cole Young (2) runs the bases after hitting a solo-home run against the Los Angeles Angels during the third inning at T-Mobile Park. Mandatory Credit: Joe Nicholson-Imagn Images [/caption]
The Mariners haven’t clawed their way out of the hole they dug over half a month in June. They are still a half game back in the AL West as the Rangers have forced them into a raise-or-fold situation.
But they began to dig a path on Monday, winning a game they needed to win and returning to a .500 record. They finally had some extra base hits and held a good lead - with mammoth homers off of Angels pitching - while George Kirby roared to life in a super-quality, near-complete outing. When Jose A. Ferrer worked through a light jam to complete the game in the ninth, Seattle walked away with a 6-2 win and the seeds of a new outlook on the season.
George Kirby gutted out an eight-inning start, moving to fourth all-MLB in innings pitched.
Coming off three straight quality starts, Kirby had been on something of a hot streak going into Monday’s game. But due to a lack of offense on the other side in these starts, Kirby had lost two of these three outings. The Mariners’ hitters woke up on the other side on Monday, giving him a win, but Kirby put in one of his best outings all year as he found legions of grounders from free-swinging Angels bats.
Things didn’t start off super well, however, as Kirby leaked a heater over the middle of the plate to Halos leadoff guy Zach Neto for a double. Denzer Guzman quickly chopped a ball off Josh Naylor’s glove and the visitors had a run on the board.
The Halos didn’t follow up on that run as Nolan Schanuel grounded into a double play two pitches later, the second of 12 ground balls from Angels bats. What could have been a crooked first inning had Kirby let his guard down became a meager single run for the visitors. After the game, the M’s hurler talked about his attitude in those situations and the way he needs to approach things when the game begins to go against him.
"That stuff happens early, it doesn't mean the game's over,” Kirby said. “I just got to keep going, and I feel like I've been doing a better job of that. Stuff happens early on, keep my head down, keep going, and do what I can to get the win."
Neto got the Angels a second run in the top of the third with a homer, but after that, it was all Kirby. He leaned on his sweeper the first time through before increasing the usage of his curveball the second time through and his four-seamer the third time through the order, but he kept hitters on their toes with all of his pitches throughout the game. The visitors brought runners into scoring position in the fourth and fifth, but as Kirby got through seven on just 79 pitches, a complete game was still in the cards.
But the Angels put pressure on Kirby in the eighth. Josh Lowe led off with a double and Neto worked a one-out walk, with the hurler beginning to run out of gas. And yet even though the bullpen was up and ready, Mariners manager Dan Wilson kept him in the game, citing a zippy painted sinker to Guzman for a called strike three and the second out of the inning.
“We were kind of on the fence on what to do there, bullpen-wise, but I think he [Kirby] got the second out at like 98 miles an hour, still had a lot in the tank there,” Wilson. “It looked like a determination in him that he wanted to finish that inning.”
Perhaps this decision had something to do with the fact that the Mariners were now up by four runs and could afford one mistake, but it was still dangerous to keep Kirby out there as he faced the lineup for the fourth time. Nevertheless, he threw everything he had at Schanuel with two outs and two on, and after a pair of 2-2 foul balls, Schanuel swung over a curveball in the dirt.
“I was trying to get real pissed off at the end there, just kind of give it all I had,” Kirby said. He finished with seven strikeouts, one walk, seven hits allowed, two earned runs, and the win. He is now at 104 innings pitched, fourth-most in MLB behind Sandy Alcantara, Christopher Sánchez, and Michael Wacha.
The Mariners finally got the home runs they needed, slugging their way to victory.
Seattle’s issues with runners in scoring position, despite offseason attempts at rectification, have generally continued into the 2026 season. Entering Monday, the Mariners had the fifth-lowest team OPS (.695) and the seventh-lowest OPS with runners in scoring position (.701). That’s why I say generally continued; the team’s issues with RISP are more representative of issues hitting in general.
That’s not to say they haven’t had individual games where an inability to hit with men on hasn’t cost them. Sunday’s stunning collapse was made possible by an offense that went 2-14 with RISP despite tons of opportunities and tons of singles.
The singles, too, have been indicative of the team’s issues at the plate. Put simply, the Mariners are a club that lives and dies by the home run ball: yet they had hit just nine homers over their past 14 games (0.64 per game) compared to 1.31 homers in their first 71 contests. They hadn’t had a single three-homer game during that stretch compared to 11 such games earlier in the year; they had gone 8-3 in those 11 matches.
During their rut from June 13 to June 28, the M’s had a league-worst .285 slugging percentage and .085 isolated power (slugging minus batting average), with just 20 total extra base hits over those 14 games. They had the lowest barrel rate of any team during that span (4.9%) and sixth-lowest hard-hit rate (35.2%)
Seattle needed to square things up and fast in order to turn things around. They still need to do that a lot more over the rest of the season, but Monday night was a good start. Cole Young logged his first multi-homer game with a combined 818 feet of home run balls while Dominic Canzone crushed a bomb of his own off a lefty, another piece of evidence that the up-and-coming DH can hit against both halves of the mound.
Young got it started with a solo shot to lead off the bottom of the third and cut the deficit to 2-1, the first time a Mariner took advantage of a meatball from Ryan Johnson. A pair of fielding mistakes by the Halos allowed Seattle to take the lead in the bottom of the fourth: after Randy Arozarena wore one with two outs, the third baseman Guzman let a routine ground ball from Naylor go under his glove and the M’s had runners on second and third. Cal Raleigh slapped a floater to left that Angels left fielder Wade Meckler could have snared with a bit of extra effort, but he held up before the ball landed and both runners scored.
The M’s were up 3-2, and though the pitching wouldn’t relinquish the lead, some resurgent slugging gave the team a much bigger advantage.
Even with a nagging hamstring injury, Dominic Canzone showed some power.
Seattle has had a lot of their players suffer minor knocks and have to miss time during the season, and typically, they struggle at the plate while working through their injuries.
Not so with Canzone, who has had hamstring discomfort for a while recently. Mariners general manager Justin Hollander said before the game that Canzone isn’t going to be playing the field while he still has hamstring issues, but he will still be playing as a designated hitter.
Canzone hit into a double play, struck out, and grounded out in three of his at-bats, but he made the most of his one hit as he launched a missile to right center to lead off the sixth. It came on a 2-2 count against southpaw Mitch Farris.
Were this earlier in the season, Canzone may not have gotten that at-bat. Despite a .712 OPS against lefties in 2025, the Mariners seemingly believed that performance was a fluke, and were very hesitant to let him take swings against left-handers. There were even times when Luke Raley, who has historically been far more platoony than Canzone, got at-bats versus left-handed pitching while Canzone got taken out. Some of this had to do with the team’s high estimation of Rob Refsnyder, even with his slump, but from statements from management phrased as Canzone “earning” these at-bats, it’s clear the team also viewed Canzone as unfit to face southpaws.
But with his home run on Monday, Canzone has a .238/.393/.524 slash line against lefties in 28 plate appearances this year. Perhaps some of this is an effect of a small sample size - and he certainly will have to work to continue this production - but it shows that he can hit against left-handers as a full-time designated hitter.
The key for Canzone right now, however, is to keep his hamstring issues under control. Perhaps he won’t be able to play every game in the near future, but it is still a day-to-day thing.
"At this point, really, it's the running that's a bit of a concern, you have to monitor that and be careful of that,” Wilson said after the game. “But right now, where he's swinging and how he's seeing the ball, you know he's right where he needs to be."
Cole Young's two homers were a good sign for a power stroke that the M’s have been keen to develop.
The development of Cole Young’s hitting to the pull side has been rocky at points. He still has issues differentiating changeups and fastballs and making the correct decision whether to push or pull the ball. Coming into Monday’s game, he had a .367 slugging percentage and a .682 OPS, with much of his value coming from defensive contributions and a barrage of clutch hits in late April.
But scattered around Young’s season have been moments where his sneaky power shines through. He already had seven home runs before Monday’s game, all fly balls to the pull side. He does have an above average pull-air rate, but in order for it to be more useful, he needs to square up more balls rather than skying them to can of corn depth.
That’s exactly what he did on his third-inning blast as he squared up a middle-middle 3-2 sinker, and with Josh Naylor on second after a walk and a stolen base, Young ambushed Farris’ first pitch. His second homer was an utter moonshot, flying a mile high and caroming off the facing between the lower and upper decks in right. The score became 6-2 Mariners, where it would remain for the rest of the game.
Young, even with the homer, still has notable splits between facing righties and lefties, with a .274/.340/.409 slash line against the former and a .229/.276/.354 slash against the latter. According to Young, there’s a mental block to remove when it comes to facing same-sided pitching, and it’s helpful to treat each pitcher individually.
“That’s the biggest thing is not, you know, thinking too much about, ‘oh, he’s a lefty, it’s gonna be so much different,’” Young said. “It’s more like, ‘all right, let’s create an approach against this guy and let’s stick to it, let’s not try to do too much, and stick to the approach and hit it hard somewhere.’”
With his two homers, Young brought his OPS over .700 for the first time since May 15.
On Deck
The Mariners have won the first game of the series, but that is something they did in both series in their previous 2-4 road trip. They have to finish things out against the Halos on Tuesday and Thursday, with an unusual break in between due to the Round of 32 World Cup match in Seattle.
And it seems like the Mariners’ margin for error and mistakes may have finally run dry. Texas has won five games in a row to put themselves up on the Mariners for the AL West crown, all while the Astros slowly creep out of their injury-marred early-season mess.
In a weird way, this is perhaps beneficial to their eventual record, as the team doesn’t have much experience playing from ahead and the sense of urgency that comes with chasing might be what they need to apply consistent pressure on their opponents. That isn’t a good indicator about consistency or their internal drive to succeed, but however they can win the division is how they need to do so. Even though Kirby won’t be playing until his next turn in the rotation, he espoused the need for this kind of finish-the-job attitude.
“It's cool to get the win, but you know, the job's not finished,” Kirby said. “We've got to keep going, there's a lot more baseball left, so I'll enjoy it for a day but then get back to work and focus on the next start.”
