Mariners Make History With 19-1 Beatdown of A’s
While not mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, the Mariners are on the edge of despair. Needing to win almost every game from here on out, Seattle got off to a great start with a 19-1 smackdown against the Athletics
For an offense that has been up and down (but mostly down) all year, the Mariners put together their highest-scoring game of the season and recorded the largest margin of victory in franchise history. On the other side of the historic night, starting pitcher Bryan Woo continued his streak of scoreless baseball, dealing six shutout innings.
The bullpen came in and did its part as well, allowing zero earned runs to complete the record-breaking night.
It may have been rather hollow on the whole considering the greater circumstances, but just looking at the score from the 10-foot view, it was the biggest win in team history, beating out a 19-2 victory over the Texas Rangers back in May 1994.
And for rookie Michael Arroyo, there was nothing close to hollow about his trio of firsts.
Offensive Explosion
J.P. Crawford smacked a single to start the game, continuing a solid stretch of production after his return from injury, and Dominic Canzone brought him home two batters later with a 382-footer to right center.
Cal Raleigh, revitalized since late August, then worked a walk off left-handed starter Gage Jump before Julio Rodríguez smoked a single off a hanging changeup to put runners on first and second. The A’s were bailed out when a liner from Josh Naylor found the first baseman’s glove, doubling Rodríguez off first base, but the reprieve for the hosts was only temporary.
With two on, two outs and a two-run lead in the second, Arozarena let loose on a slider down and out of the strike zone and brought Seattle’s lead to five runs.
At that point, perhaps it is more curt to talk about the times the Mariners didn’t score than the times they did. Only the third and the sixth stood out as clean innings for the A’s, with multi-run showings for the visitors in every other frame.
Michael Arroyo’s first big-league hit - a double to left center - inaugurated a fourth inning where Seattle scored twice; two more runs followed in the fifth on a Cole Young homer, no. 17 of the year for the sophomore second baseman. Arroyo upgraded his night from good to great with a homer to left center in the seventh and Crawford followed suit with a two-run shot later in the frame.
When Arroyo sent home the final run with a sacrifice fly in the ninth, he capped off a game where the M’s scored 19 runs on 23 hits and six walks.
Woo Logs Quality Start
Bryan Woo came into Saturday’s game on an absolute tear. In his last start, also against the A’s, he twirled eight shutout innings while allowing only one hit; in the outing before that, he allowed just one run in six innings in Fenway Park’s unfriendly confines.
Only five A’s hitters reached base against Woo, two of them in the first inning. Woo appeared to earn a called third strike for the final out, but left fielder Lawrence Butler challenged the call, won the challenge and promptly hit a hard single. After another hard-hit single, the A’s had runners on the corners with two outs. But former Mariner Donovan Walton, fresh off walking Seattle off on Friday’s opener, struck out on a checked swing, ultimately ending the A’s only chance to knock Woo out early.
Woo’s only real blunder was not one of pitching but of fielding. After gloving a comebacker with a man on in the third, he attempted to turn a double play, but bounced the throw to second in the dirt. He now had to deal with runners on the corners and nobody out.
The hurler elevated a fastball to induce a swinging third strike from Butler for the first out of the inning, and while a ground ball scored the unearned run from third, it was all the production the A’s would muster that night.
Woo ended the day with five strikeouts while allowing three hits and two walks over six innings. He will attempt to push his streak of zero-earned run starts to three games against the Rockies when his turn in the rotation comes up again, but for now, his career of smoking the Athletics continues - he now has a 1.78 ERA and 0.863 WHIP against the team in 12 career starts.
Michael Arroyo’s Game of Firsts
Starting at designated hitter for the first time in a week, the Colombian rookie had himself a game. Called up due to the general consistency of his bat, Arroyo hadn’t yet racked up enough solid contact in his first two appearances to get past MLB defenses, and he entered the third game of his career without a hit.
Leading off the fourth inning, Arroyo blasted a slider low and away over the left fielder’s head for a stand-up double, a memorable first hit for the highly touted prospect. The ball left the bat at 104 miles an hour, the first hard hit ball of his young career. A walk, also the first of his career, came with two outs in the fifth, and his seventh-inning blast showed an ability to punish a pitcher even when he threw it to a solid location.
And even though his sacrifice fly fell into a waiting glove well short of the wall, it was another hard hit ball; Arroyo knocked four balls at 100 miles an hour or more off the bat. Given that his hard-hit rates have been the biggest concern in both the minors and the majors, such a thunderous game in terms of both actual production and raw physical metrics was the best kind of news the M’s could have received.
On Deck
Seattle will send its resident Texan, Bryce Miller, to the mound to face A’s southpaw Jacob Lopez on Sunday, a game the M’s must win if any meager hope of October baseball is to remain alive.
The M’s will then travel to Anaheim and Denver to face the Angels and Rockies. Seattle needs to take advantage of those struggling teams, but their predicament means than anything less than perfection likely won’t be enough. The M’s have won eight games in a row once this year - can they do it again?
