Mariners Lineup Goes Off on Not-So-Amazin’ Mets, Seattle Wins 11-9 Slugfest
NEW YORK, N.Y. – You don’t usually win games where your starting pitcher gives up six runs before the fifth inning, but the Seattle Mariners had the luxury of being up against the August 2025 New York Mets. Amazin’.
The boys from Queens dropped their 14th of their last 16 games as nine separate Mariners got base knocks. Not only the usual suspects of Cal Raleigh, Julio Rodriguez, and Randy Arozarena, too: we’re talking names like Mitch Garver, Donovan Solano, and Dylan Moore finding outfield grass against a struggling (putting that lightly) Mets pitching staff.
Seattle very much needed that win, gaining a game on the Astros with an 11-9 victory that saw a whole lot of offense and not a lot of pitching – well, other than most of the Mariners bullpen, who did a fine job.
Mariners’ Custom Bats Wake Up Early, Raleigh Passes Another Milestone
The Player’s Weekend custom bats may have woken up the Mariners offense, it seems, as Randy Arozarena – waving a pencil – whacked a single up the middle on the second pitch of the game. Two batters later, Julio Rodriguez used his Ichiro club to great effect with a run-scoring double down the left field line.
Mitch Garver was the next man to join the party, doing so in the second inning. The “Garv Sauce” maple was the first Mariner bat to leave the yard.
Arozarena may have been pushing pencils, but he was no desk jockey, as he punched another leadoff single in the third inning. Raleigh touched the ball with all of his “Big Dumper Trident” stick and sent it into the second deck in left field. That was his league-leading 46th home run of the year, the second-most ever by a primary catcher in MLB history, trailing only Salvador Perez’ 48 dingers in 2021.
Castillo’s Heavy Struggles
Things didn’t start out as hot on the other side of the ball for the Mariners. Luis Castillo did not have a good game on Friday, going just four innings and giving up six runs on nine hits, three of them homers. It was his worst outing of 2025, as it ties his highest runs allowed mark from any start this year while being the first time this season he did not make it into the fifth inning.
Castillo’s difficulties stemmed from two things: he was missing his spots quite a bit, and when that resulted in him falling behind in counts, his backup plan was to fire away right over the plate.
Early on, Castillo struggled with his release point, leaving balls well into the right-handed batter’s box or putting them out over the plate. This bit him immediately, as Francisco Lindor got three straight three-ball fastballs out over the plate and crushed the last one over the left field wall.
The Mariners right-hander settled in and painted his spots late in the first, but struggles with leaving balls out over the plate resumed in the second as Jeff McNeil lined a leadoff double into the right field corner. Although he got helped out by two pieces of weak contact for two quick outs, he left one too many heaters out over the plate to Francisco Alvarez, who grounded one up the middle for an RBI single.
Ronny Mauricio pushed him to third with a long single, although this one was off a low slider. Lindor was up again, and again, Castillo fell behind him, this time 2-0. Lindor fouled off an excellent 2-2 low-and-in slider to keep his at bat alive – and lo and behold, the next pitch was a fastball over the plate and a line drive into center field to put the Mets up by a run.
Juan Soto walked to load the bases and Castillo fell behind 3-1 to Nimmo, but the struggling Mets outfielder grounded a 3-2 fastball to second to end the inning with the Mets up by a run.
Castillo’s third inning went well enough and he got the first two guys in the fourth, but then the wheels fell off the bus and the Mets doubled their tally.
It started with Ronny Mauricio’s at-bat. Castillo got his strikes on fastballs up in the zone that Mauricio swung under but missed on some changeups well out of the zone. Mauricio fouled off a couple fastballs out over the plate but in the zone, but instead of keeping the fastballs coming, Castillo tried the slow stuff well below the plate – and that’s what Mauricio was thriving on as he hit a single shot out into right field.
Once again, Francisco Lindor came in with a chance to do some damage. Castillo kept trying fastballs over the zone to get him chasing, none of which worked. The second option was once again to pump fastballs down the middle. This had the predictable result of back-to-back home runs by Lindor and Soto.
Nimmo cracked a double, but Castillo got a Pete Alonso flyout to end the inning and his outing.
Doubles Galore
Because of the offense, the M’s were still in the game. It was a welcome change on the front side of the ball from the Baltimore series, as the Mariners got production up and down the lineup against nearly every pitcher the Mets threw out there.
They even had some bad luck in the top of the fourth, as a Cole Young double that would have scored Mitch Garver from first bounced over the wall for a ground-ruler that automatically held the runner at third, and Arozarena struck out to end the inning with no production. The fifth went pretty quickly for Manaea, but with the starter on 86 pitches, the bullpen came out for the sixth.
I don’t know if the Mets bullpen is that horrendous or if the Mariners offense is that good (despite what we saw in Baltimore, it’s probably a little bit of both) but the Mariners had a field day from then on.
Donovan Solano got on in the sixth with a single and moved up on a J.P. Crawford groundout before Cole Young knocked him in with a single of his own, and so the Mets’ lead was down to a single run.
The seventh was when the floodgates opened. A Cal Raleigh double opened the frame and Eugenio Suárez got a two-bagger of his own to drive in the tying run with one out off Ryan Helsley. Left-hander Brooks Raley trotted out to the mound to replace the struggling flamethrower, but the next five results were, in order: a single, a walk, a double, a strikeout, and another double. Ryne Stanek, the third Mets pitcher of the inning, had to come and put out the fire with Seattle now up 10-6.
The M’s still had a bit of gas in the tank. Raleigh opened the eighth with his second double in as many innings and Julio Rodriguez immediately knocked him in with – you guessed it – another double. Despite another chance in the ninth (including a double by Dylan Moore), that was it for Seattle’s offense.
Seattle hit nine total doubles during the game, a team record.
And the thing is, the Mets bullpen hasn’t been godawful for the entire season. They have an above-average bullpen ERA over 2025. Even during the Orange and Blue’s recent rut of losses, it has mostly been the starting pitching that is giving up the bulk of the crooked numbers. But in the last three games, including Friday, the Mets’ bullpen has given up 14 runs in 13 innings of work, enough for a 9.69 ERA.
Mets Make it Interesting
The twists and turns of this ballgame weren’t done yet. With Castillo only getting through four on Friday, the bullpen was going to have to step up big-time. Eduard Bazardo pitched the fifth, Caleb Ferguson the sixth, and Gabe Speier the seventh, all without any difficulty.
But in the eighth inning, with the Mariners up by five runs, Dan Wilson put in Jackson Kowar. Despite (and paradoxically because of) what happened next, this was the right call, sort of. Kowar had good speed but really bad location, getting one out while giving up a single, a double, and a home run. All of a sudden, it was back to being close.
Wilson yanked Kowar and put in Matt Brash, who sent down the next two guys with ease. Andrés Muñoz pitched a one-two-three ninth to close out Seattle’s 11-9 victory and get his 29th save of the season.
The reason why I say it was (sort of) the right call to put in Kowar is that it’s the right situation, if any, to use a guy like Kowar. The three-batter minimum means you would be stuck with a guy having a horrible night for far too long in a close game, but when you’re up by five runs, that’s when you bring out the lower-end guys. If he has a good inning, you rest up your high-leverage guys. If he gets himself in trouble, you bring in the firemen.
Now, there’s obviously a way this could have gone wrong in this particular game. Had Brash or Muñoz had an off night, the Mariners would have been up you-know-what creek without a paddle. This was the result of an arguable Wilson decision earlier in the game – that being to pull Bazardo after he threw just seven pitches in his first inning. Wilson had the opportunity to stretch a little more out of his relievers in a game where the starter couldn’t go halfway, and he didn’t take it. Had this game gone to extras, that could have been a deciding factor.
Cole Young
Perhaps the most promising performance of Friday’s game was that of Young. The rookie second baseman, unlike most everyone else in the lineup, went without his custom club, his matte black bat resembling a sharp businessman at Comic-Con. And Young indeed took care of business, going 3-4 with two doubles and a walk. And as I’ve said before, his trajectory is perhaps the best thing about the young infielder. His overall slash line is .256/.342/.360, but in the month of August, that figure changes to .308/.486/.385.
Since July 1, his on base percentage is .377 and he has drawn a walk in 16 percent of his plate appearances, which is a walk rate on par with some of the best in the league. When the guy who is supposed to be the weakest of the nine is doing something like that, you know you have a good lineup. He’s also 22.
On Deck
The Mariners improved to 68-55 with their win on Friday and moved to within half a game of the Houston Astros for the AL West lead. The Red Sox and Yankees both won, so the Wild Card standings remain the same for the three current spot-holders, but the Cleveland Guardians lost and are now four games back of Seattle. Still, that’s too close for comfort – the Mariners have to keep winning.
