> ## 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. # Leo Rivas Walks Off Cubs, Gives M’s Homestand Jolt - URL: https://www.emeraldcityspectrum.com/seattle-mariners-leo-rivas-walk-off-chicago-cubs/ - Published: 2026-08-22T20:34:50.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-08T06:10:36.000Z - Author: Callaghan Bluechel - Tags: Analysis, Mariners, Leo Rivas, Cal Raleigh, Brendan Donovan, Randy Arozarena, Cole Young, Josh Naylor, Brock Rodden, Emerson Hancock, Gabe Speier, Eduard Bazardo, Andres Munoz, Seranthony Dominguez \[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="6233"\] ![ Seattle Mariners Leo Rivas (76) celebrates after hitting a walk off single against the Chicago Cubs during the tenth inning at T-Mobile Park. Mandatory Credit: Steven Bisig-Imagn Images ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1d/f2/1df2f77b-83dd-4bc0-a6d2-6d1bb5df89a3/content/images/2026/10/2026-08-22t051402z_902146083_mt1usatoday29642978_rtrmadp_3_mlb-chicago-cubs-at-seattle-mariners-format-original.jpg) Seattle Mariners Leo Rivas (76) celebrates after hitting a walk off single against the Chicago Cubs during the tenth inning at T-Mobile Park. Mandatory Credit: Steven Bisig-Imagn Images \[/caption\] It’s the kind of thing that engenders legitimate hope in a team so downtrodden, but it’s the kind of thing fringe Mariners role players have done for decades in ultimately sour-ending seasons. Regardless of the view from 30,000 feet, it was a magical moment for those celebrating within a three-foot radius of Leo Rivas in the bottom of the 10th on Friday night. The game had been a back-and-forth affair between the M’s and Cubs, two teams with high expectations going into 2026 but only one of whom had performed up to snuff. At times, Seattle looked like the team they had constructed on paper, with Brendan Donovan and Cal Raleigh both producing runs. At others, the Cubs ambushed mistake pitches from multiple Mariners pitchers, and it had gone to extras before Seattle triumphed 6-5. ### Emerson Hancock recovered from early struggles to put together almost six innings. During the first half of the season, Mariners starting pitching had the sixth best ERA, fifth best StatCast expected ERA (xERA \[1\]), best fielding independent pitching (FIP \[2\]) and third best expected FIP (xFIP \[3\]) of any rotation in baseball. In the second half, however, Seattle’s starters have had the seventh worst ERA, fourth worst FIP, and ninth worst xFIP. Their xERA ranking of 10th best since the break is small consolation with their struggles spanning all the non-StatCast metrics. They went from a league-best 11.0 starting pitcher FanGraphs WAR (fWAR) pre-break to a second-to-last 0.5 fWAR post-break. Some of this regression was to be expected, as they had the second lowest home run to fly ball ratio (HR/FB%) of any team in the first half, 10.1% compared to the league average 12.2% - and since the break they have given up a 14.2% HR/FB%, eighth highest in baseball. Lest we miss the trees for the forest, the decline has been clearly pronounced in some pitchers more than others. George Kirby and Bryce Miller have been struggling dearly, while Logan Gilbert has improved plenty. Emerson Hancock, who started on Friday, had roughly kept pace with his first half self. But Hancock hasn’t been immune to struggles. Pete Crow-Armstrong, a contender for the Senior Circuit MVP, led the game off with a wall-scraping homer to right center, and before the frame ended, the Cubs had logged three more extra base hits and two runs. The first two, fitting for both being 100-plus off the bat, were the ones that did the damage - a double from Michael Busch and a homer from Alex Bregman - but it was enough to put Seattle in an early 3-0 hole. And although Hancock had a quick second, the third saw a resumption of danger. A low throw from Brock Rodden at shortstop and a bad pick from Josh Naylor put Seiya Suzuki on first before an airmailed toss from Brendan Donovan at third sent Suzuki to third and Bregman to second with one out. Hancock locked it down at that point, striking out Ian Happ and getting a grounder from Nico Hoerner to end that threat. Another chance gathered for Chicago in the fourth as two reached with one out, but Crow-Armstrong flew out to left and Hancock fanned Suzuki to keep another zero. The hurler once again did something of a minor Houdini act in the fifth as he worked around a leadoff double and got the first two outs of the sixth, but a hard single from Carson Kelly to turn the lineup card over ended Hancock’s night. The hurler logged 98 pitches and 68 strikes, six strikeouts, zero walks, eight hits, and three runs allowed (all earned). ### The Mariners got the bulk of their runs in a well-oiled second. The second inning was one of the few times in recent memory where the whole of the Mariners’ offensive plan actually panned out as the front office had hoped. Josh Naylor cracked a one-out single up the middle, Taylor Ward walked, and with Cubs starter Matthew Boyd badly in need of a strike, he leaked a 92.9 mile an hour four-seamer over the middle of the plate to Cal Raleigh. Despite his myriad struggles in 2026, Raleigh whacked Boyd’s mistake to kingdom come, also known as the Mariners bullpen. Perhaps it was the fish bat he was using for Players’ Weekend, or perhaps it was the fact it was a Broadway cement mixer. The game was tied in an instant, but luckily for Seattle, the inning didn’t end there. Cole Young knocked a single into left and got to second on a deep Rodden flyout. Donovan knocked him in and gave the Mariners the lead for the first time in the game. Another run followed in the bottom of the fifth as a bad throw from Hoerner at short allowed a hustling Rodden aboard and he made it to second on a balk (Cubs manager Craig Counsell would get ejected between innings for arguing this point) before Donovan grounded him to third and Randy Arozarena looped one into center. The offense found themselves subdued during the remainder of regulation, but with a two-run lead, it was up to the bullpen to close out the game. ### Late Chicago homers sent the game to extras. Gabe Speier relieved Hancock in the sixth and worked a clean seventh, but in the top of the eighth, it was Eduard Bazardo’s time on the mound. With a month left in the season, Bazardo had already accumulated 60 appearances, and the workhorse usage had seemingly affected his abilities: over his previous 17 games, he had a 5.40 ERA and 6.15 FIP. Happ took Bazardo deep on the fourth pitch of his at-bat, making the game 5-4, and as Hoerner and Pedro Ramírez both reached base with nobody out, things looked incredibly dicey. Bazardo got Michael Conforto to shank a popup for the first out and Kelly grounded out, but the latter play moved the runners over with Crow-Armstrong at the dish. The M’s called for an intentional walk. Although this brought up the less frightening Suzuki, it also gave Bazardo no room for error. This looked bad as he fell behind 2-0, with the second pitch unsuccessfully challenged by Cal Raleigh behind the plate. The third pitch was again on the lower outside corner, but with the situation at hand, Raleigh only needed to be 29% confident for challenging to be the correct play. This time, it was overturned to a strike. Bazardo dotted the corner with a sinker to knot the count up and got Suzuki to swing and miss on yet another borderline pitch, this time a sweeper. He had a mild reaction. > Amped Cam™: Eduard Bazardo > > He strands the bases loaded with a huge strikeout to Seiya Suzuki ... That came after a critical ABS challenge from Cal Raleigh that initially pushed the count to 3-0\. [pic.twitter.com/1MUBcPOoxx](https://t.co/1MUBcPOoxx?ref=emeraldcityspectrum.com)— Daniel Kramer (@DKramer\_) [August 22, 2026](https://x.com/DKramer%5F/status/2091018018193293425?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=emeraldcityspectrum.com) Mariners closer Andrés Muñoz, as usual, had the ninth. As usual, he pumped triple digits with regularity, striking out Busch and getting Bregman to an 0-2 count. His ensuing slider, however, was nothing but a cement mixer to a hitter with an ocean of cosmic goodwill on his side, and Bregman turned it into a tie game. Before anyone could adjust, it was off to extras and the game depended on Seranthony Domínguez to keep the ghost runner off the board in the 10th. ### Seranthony Domínguez and Leo Rivas were the Friday night heroes in Seattle. The first out in extras is the most important, as it keeps the ghost runner at second and thus allows any two good old kinds of outs to maintain a clean sheet for the frame. Domínguez got that first out when Ramírez popped out in foul ground, and Hoerner, the automatic runner, stayed put at second. Domínguez kept himself in the strike zone often enough with Michael Conforto at the dish to get him to chase a splitter beneath the zone for the second out, and although Hoerner stole third on the pitch, an easy flyout from Kelly gave Seattle a stellar chance of winning. It looked for a second that it might go to waste, however. Despite Victor Robles - who came on in the ninth as a defensive replacement for Dominic Canzone - laying down the bunt to get Arozarena to third, Julio Rodríguez pounded the ball on the ground to a five-man infield and there were quickly two outs, the Mariners in the same situation their opponents had found themselves in back in the top of the frame. Chicago called for the intentional walk of Naylor to get to Rivas. With a .130 average and .424 OPS this year, Rivas hadn’t started the game, but he had come on as a pinch runner in the eighth. Still, this was a guy who had been out of commission for months with vertigo. His journey back to the majors hadn’t been an easy one. The only consolation for Seattle was Rivas’ history of walk-offs: a 10th inning single against the Giants on Aug. 23, 2024 and a 13th inning homer against the Cardinals on Sept. 10, 2025\. That history, as it turned out, was an apt guide. Rivas cracked the ball into center field for the walk-off single. It was a 6-5 score. ### On Deck With Houston and Texas both winning, the Mariners didn’t gain any ground in the AL West race. Still, they didn’t lose any ground either, and with the teams they are playing in the August stretch, they need every win they can get. Saturday will see rookie Kade Anderson make his first start of his career. \[1\] xERA is a conversion of expected weighted on base average (xwOBA) to an ERA scale; xwOBA in turn is a production expectation based only on how hard the ball is hit and at what aerial angle it is hit (it does not take into account hit direction or fielder positioning), scaled to on-base percentage. \[2\] FIP accounts for the effects of only homers, walks, hit batters, and strikeouts among innings pitched, with a constant added to scale the stat to ERA so that league average FIP and league average ERA are the same. The key concept behind FIP is to control for only outcomes that are between the pitcher and batter alone and do not involve fielders. \[3\] xFIP is the same as FIP but with the home run component replaced with the amount of fly balls given up multiplied by the league home run to fly ball ratio. The concept here is that pitchers have little control over how many of their allowed fly balls become homers.