Rodríguez, Naylor, Young Hack Timely Hits as Mariners Mash Minnesota Late
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Seattle Mariners starting pitcher Logan Gilbert (36) delivers a pitch against the Minnesota Twins during the first inning at Target Field. Mandatory Credit: Nick Wosika-Imagn Images [/caption]
Here’s a stat: Julio Rodríguez has more triple doubles in the city of Minneapolis than Nikola Jokić does in the calendar year 2026.
Well, adding a three-double baseball game into the widely accepted hoops definition of “triple double” allows that to be true. It’s also a testament to the defensive skill of one Rudy Gobert, who has finally and resoundingly managed to convince the world that he is actually good at basketball.
As far as Rodríguez is concerned, his three doubles - the baseball version - set a couple of tables for Seattle and cleared their last, and the center fielder accounted for two runs scored and two others knocked in during the Mariners’ 7-1 victory over the Minnesota Twins.
It wasn’t just Rodríguez, as Josh Naylor and Cole Young offered some timely hits of their own while starter Logan Gilbert wriggled himself out of enough pickles and jams to make some truly unique culinary concoctions, even while only going five innings. The M’s, after all their tribulations to start the season, are a game behind .500.
Logan Gilbert showed a bit of adjustment but still had to Houdini his way out of a five-inning start.
It is often said that pitchers are crazy. Usually, this refers to intensity or the way the staff interacts with the rest of the players, and it is most stereotypically associated with the isolated (and thus mysterious) bullpen.
For Gilbert’s quest to regain the efficiency he once had in years past, however, the standard non-baseball definition has often applied.
The typical run of action is this: Gilbert buries secondaries as soon as he gets to two strikes and hitters don’t bite nearly enough to allow him to work quickly. Then he stays at the bottom of the zone and hitters don’t need to change their eye level, yet with every pitch it seems the Mariners expect they’ll get a swing and miss. Sometimes it comes after a few pitches, sometimes there’s some weak contact, occasionally there’s a hit. Rarely does this mean efficiency, but the Mariners battery has seemed to expect that it somehow will the next time.
What’s it called when you keep trying the same thing expecting different results?
Now, Gilbert’s standard set of results from 2025 were still solid. His 25 starts, 131 innings pitched, and 50 earned runs in 2025 gives an average start of a hair under 5 ⅓ innings with two earned runs. Not bad, but not what they expected from such a strong ace in years past.
But Gilbert’s tendency to try the same thing even after the hitter proves he can handle it is more evident when he gets in a pickle. It’s one thing to lose a couple pitches per hitter due to foul balls before actually getting the out, it’s a whole different ballgame to try to fit a square peg in a round hole with runners on.
There were some green shoots on Tuesday in the efficiency department, mostly related to the changeup. Gilbert could effectively play a low in-zone changeup off the high fastball, getting swings and misses when the hitters identified fastball and called strikes when the hitters identified off-speed. The key adjustment he can make in 2026 is that hitters expect him to bury anything when he’s ahead with two strikes, and so doing other things in those counts is paramount.
To be sure, Gilbert would still bury too many sliders, changeups, and splitters beneath the plate. Ironically, the one person he consistently tried to establish the high four-seamer against was Byron Buxton, who touched one up for a third inning single and launched a homer in the fifth inning on the same pitch.
But the homer didn’t end Gilbert’s Houdini act. The third had seen the Twins get two on early and move them over to second and third, but a weak groundout ended that frame. An odd Cole Young error - though downstream of his poor arm, as he tried to overcompensate for it with an overeager transition to second and lost the ball - helped load the bases in the fourth with one out. But he didn’t try to force the splitter when Tristan Gray let it travel under the plate, and a later change in the zone got an awkward swing and miss before a groundout ended the frame.
The fifth continued with a rocket double to right from Trevor Larnach - Target Field’s high right field wall aided the escape artistry there, as it would have been a homer in most yards including T-Mobile - and although Gilbert got Josh Bell to chase the splitter for the second out, he tried to force the pitch against Kody Clemens and ended up hitting him to continue the inning. Victor Caratini meekly grounded out and the Twins remained at a single run, going 0-10 with runners in scoring position on the evening.
From one angle, Gilbert’s five innings of one run ball were something approaching the platonic ideal of a 2025 and 2026 Gilbert start; on the other, he appeared to truly have a gust to take him out of the doldrums. Whether he can find the trade winds again is, of course, yet to be told.
Josh Naylor ended his stolen base streak but put four runs on the board while some Julio Rodríguez doubles mania both set the table and added on.
Upon joining the Mariners in 2025, Josh Naylor stole 25 bases in 25 attempts over that season, the ensuing playoffs, and the beginning of the 2026 season. That streak ended on Tuesday in the top of the fourth, with Twins pitcher Joe Ryan catching him in between first and second. He tried to get another bag in the sixth inning, and although second base umpire Mike Muchlinski initially ruled him safe, replay review showed that he had been tagged a split second before his oven mitt reached the base.
What Naylor had done to get to first was more important for the Mariners. With Buxton’s bomb the only tally on the board, Rodríguez had drilled a two-out double down the left field line. Seattle had already squandered a pair of singles in the top of the second, but with Ryan facing the order for the third time, it seemed the visiting bats finally began to get a good grasp on his arsenal.
Naylor whacked a high fastball into left field to tie the game. Seattle’s offense picked back up in the top of the seventh as Randy Arozarena knocked Ryan out of the game with a double and Luke Raley grounded him over to third (despite the southpaw Kody Funderburk on the rubber), but it seemed for a second that the opportunity might go to waste as the pinch-hitting Mitch Garver popped up to very shallow center.
As has already happened so often to begin the season, Cole Young came through in a big spot, finding the outfield grass for the go-ahead hit.
Insurance came in the eighth and ninth. The eighth was more majestic, as Rodríguez doubled (his second) J.P. Crawford to third - helped by a misplay by Austin Martin in right - and Josh Naylor launched the ball deep into the right field concourse for three runs. He didn’t forget the big league bat flip, and the stick certainly traveled further than Martin did.
That’s not to downplay the ninth, when the lead went from solid to near-secure with Rodríguez’ third double of the night, bringing home Young and Leo Rivas.
The stark contrast in performance between the first five innings and the final four had quite a bit to do with Minnesota’ bullpen being subpar (and significantly worse than Ryan, who entered the game with a career 3.79 ERA), but taking advantage of subpar pitchers to put up big numbers when possible is what good teams do. It’s a lot easier to have a good foundation of consistently knocking bad pitchers around (centering all the questions and focus around what to do against the best in baseball) than not being able to do so.
Eduard Bazardo, Gabe Speier, and Matt Brash held down the fort while the game was at least somewhat close, and a squeaky clean inning from Cooper Criswell kept any putative Minnesota comeback far away from the realm of reality to finish off the Mariners’ 15th win of the season.
On Deck
The rubber match between George Kirby and Taj Bradley will be a day game on Wednesday, after which the Mariners take a rest day on Thursday and go back to T-Mobile Park for a six-game homestand against the Royals and Braves.
While the Royals currently sit at the bottom of the pack in the AL Central (though not by much), the Braves are already up a truckload of games in the NL East with a 21-9 record.
