> ## 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. # Gilbert, Mariners Salvage Red Sox Matinee, Keep Heads Above Water - URL: https://www.emeraldcityspectrum.com/seattle-mariners-salvage-boston-red-sox-matinee-heads-above-water/ - Published: 2026-06-22T08:56:45.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-08T06:11:18.000Z - Author: Callaghan Bluechel - Tags: News, Analysis, Mariners, Logan Gilbert, Dominic Canzone, Cole Young, Julio Rodriguez, Weston Wilson, Gabe Speier, Eduard Bazardo, Andres Munoz, Rob Refsnyder \[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="3804"\] ![ Seattle Mariners starting pitcher Logan Gilbert (36) throws against the Boston Red Sox during the first inning at T-Mobile Park. Mandatory Credit: Joe Nicholson-Imagn Images ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1d/f2/1df2f77b-83dd-4bc0-a6d2-6d1bb5df89a3/content/images/2026/10/walter-format-original.jpg) Seattle Mariners starting pitcher Logan Gilbert (36) throws against the Boston Red Sox during the first inning at T-Mobile Park. Mandatory Credit: Joe Nicholson-Imagn Images \[/caption\] All wins are equal on the final sheet of standings at the end of the year, but not all these wins mean the same things when they are played. Some wins are triumphant jewels in the crowns of great streaks, others are dead cat bounces for a team plummeting into the gutter. The Mariners’ 3-1 win over the Red Sox on Sunday was neither of those, but it was the definitional salvaged game, turning what could have been a sweep to go under .500 on the summer solstice into a lost series and a 40-39 record with the halfway point nearly reached. The offense, for the eighth straight game, didn’t impress, but the Mariners worked a win anyway thanks to an incredible start from a rebounding elite arm, a couple of timely hits, and a sharp bullpen. And yet the win may be pyrrhic, with another key player falling to the injury bug. ### Logan Gilbert worked into the seventh and kept the Red Sox to a single run. While the Mariners haven’t had everyone clicking at the same time, they have had the relative luxury of often getting a cold man hot once their hot man goes cold. While Emerson Hancock has seemingly taken a big step back over the past two outings, Logan Gilbert has finally settled into a real adjustment against the five-and-dive outings and long at-bats that had created them. This adjustment has been quite simple and equally effective: instead of relying solely on his secondary pitches in favorable counts - a strategy that teams effectively countered by simply laying off the low sliders and buried splitters they would see time and time again - Gilbert has truly mixed things up with fastballs, curveballs, splitters, and sliders in these counts. This means, in the aggregate, that he is throwing the heater a lot more. “The usage has gone up a little bit the last couple games, when we see if it’s working, just try to get good counts right away,” Gilbert said. “You see guys like (Bryan) Woo do it all the time, Bryce (Miller), guys with really good heaters trying to use it, make ‘em swing, and it kinda opens up the secondary stuff later, too.” While Gilbert still needs to be able to land secondaries early in counts in order to truly push past his issues, the willingness to go with heaters in pitchers’ counts has clearly augmented every weapon he has in these situations. Hitters are far more off-balance against everything in these counts, unable to sit secondaries. There was a certain anger visible as Gilbert went into his “Walter” alter ego, reaching 99.9 miles an hour on his third pitch of the game. With the radar gun reading 100, it was an early boost of confidence to the starting pitcher. “I’m checkin’ all the time. Especially that pitch, I think Cal (Raleigh) called somethin’ else, but I knew the velo was a little bit higher, so I’m like, ‘this is the time to go for it,’ so I saw it, looked in the dugout at Bryce right away, he was goin’ crazy.” The Red Sox struck out twice in the first, twice in the second, and once in each of the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh. Plenty of these were on the splitter and curveball, though of course a big aspect of those punchouts was that these pitches were close to the zone; Gilbert earned the chases he got. Talking with media after the game, he credited his catcher Raleigh with clever pitch selections. “Cal did a good job. I think slider right away probably, and he went to curveball a few times with two strikes. And I think that was smart, afterwards looking back, like if guys are maybe in between bat speeds, you don’t really wanna give ‘em a gift at 90 or whatever.” According to Gilbert, the heater did more than just play off his secondaries; it got him in a good attacking rhythm to look to dominate the batters. “Especially with the fastball, you kinda have to be that way. Even if it’s not great, you gotta be very aggressive, mindset and everything. But when it is working well, you want them to be on their heels, you want them to get two strikes as quickly as possible.” Gilbert gave up one run on Sunday, that being a home run from Nate Eaton in the top of the third. It was Eaton’s first home run since Sept. 12, 2025, and it came as he swung in the right place at the right time and launched one of Gilbert’s many fastballs into the seats. Nobody was on base as he hit the game-tying blast, but it still gave the visitors an extra bit of life. That was mostly it when it came to threats. A runner reached scoring position in each of the first and sixth innings, though with 94 pitches and the left-handed Jarren Duran at the plate in the top of the seventh, Gilbert’s day was done. With how little the offense produced, the outing was key to Seattle’s win. ### Seattle’s offensive engine continued sputtering, but the team managed to scratch three runs across. Going into the game, the Mariners had slashed .167/.253/.244 in their previous seven games and scored just 2.3 runs per game. Despite the team’s general struggles against left-handers throughout the whole year, the handedness splits between lefties and righties during this stretch actually slightly favored the M’s against *lefties*, as they had OPSed .488 against right-handers and .513 with a southpaw on the mound. To be clear, both of those OPS figures are horrendous for an MLB team, but it means that the woes have been spread out among the squad no matter which side of the mound the opposing pitcher throws from. That trend continued for its eighth straight day on Sunday, with the team only scoring three runs, a figure that has been their maximum during this stretch. They were facing the left-handed rookie Payton Tolle, the third straight left-handed starter during their series against the Red Sox. Dominic Canzone got things started with a solo home run in the bottom of the second, but the rest of the runs wound up manufactured in the fifth and sixth. Weston Wilson, recently added to the organization from free agency after being released by the Orioles organization, chopped a two-out single and stole second before Cole Young fought an eight-pitch at-bat that ended in a grounder through the left side to score Wilson. Julio Rodríguez got things started in the following frame with a one-out single, but it took a bit of good luck for the M’s to get one across. Rob Refsnyder sent a relatively routine grounder to Marcelo Mayer at short, but the ball kicked off his side and went into center. Rodríguez got to third on the play and scored on a Canzone groundout to bring the score to 3-1\. It wasn’t an overall *good* day at the plate for the Mariners, though it got the job done in the end. The team went 6-29 (.208) with one of the hits being the aforementioned Refsnyder bouncer off Boston’s shortstop. With a two-run lead, it was up to the bullpen to deal with things. ### Gabe Speier, Eduard Bazardo, and Andrés Muñoz finished out the game despite the Sox getting the tying run to second. Boston’s best chance at knotting the game back up came right after Gilbert left the game. Despite reliever Gabe Speier striking out Duran to begin his outing, Caleb Durbin rocked a double into the outfield and baserunner Mickey Gasper got to third, with the potential second and third runs for the Red Sox both in scoring position. Once Speier blew three heaters past pinch-hitter Andruw Monasterio, it was smooth sailing from there. Eduard Bazardo had a 1-2-3 inning and although Andrés Muñoz gave up a one-out single in the ninth, he finished out his 13th save of the season and the M’s took home their win. It has largely gone under the radar with the team’s batting woes over their past eight games, but Muñoz has put together a solid run of form since his blown save in Detroit. Over his past six appearances, he has logged five saves and given up two runs in five completed innings, with those runs coming only in the no-out Washington appearance where he had to leave with a back issue. ### Dominic Canzone proved some mettle against lefties but exited with a hamstring injury. The Mariners, throughout much of the year, have been very reluctant to allow Canzone to take at-bats against left-handed pitching. This is in spite of a fairly good line in that split last year, as Canzone slashed .276/.368/.345 versus lefties in 2025\. It seems the team viewed this overall solid production as a mirage, with a much diminished slugging compared to his performance versus righties likely being a big indicator, but the degree to which they have laid off letting him hit against southpaws has been detrimental to the team’s success. Canzone showed on Sunday that he indeed has chops against same-sided pitching, slapping a home run the other way against the southpaw Tolle. Even with his at-bats on Sunday against Tolle, he still has only taken 23 plate appearances against left-handers in the entire season. It’s not enough to build a real sample out of, but just for the record, his same-sided slash is .222/.391/.381\. None of those are real signals due to it being a miniscule amount of at-bats, but the .159 isolated power (ISO, defined as slugging minus average) compared to a .069 ISO last year is something to keep an eye on. His ISOs against right-handers over the past two seasons have been .216 in 2025 and .293 this year. But the biggest news on the Canzone front, unfortunately, may be yet another hamstring injury for the Mariners. His RBI groundout in the bottom of the sixth may have ended decently for the M’s with a run in, but he seemed to yank something in his hamstring as he stretched running to first. Mariners manager Dan Wilson, as usual, didn’t give much indication one way or the other, calling him “kind of a day-to-day situation” after the game. And as usual, that’s clear as mud: this could be a meaningless cramp of some kind or it could sideline him for a while. Any serious injury to Canzone would be a serious blow. The right fielder and DH has put together a true breakout season over the first half of the year, with a .281/.353/.562 slash line, 12 doubles, 12 homers, and 33 RBIs over 201 plate appearances. He has 1.6 Baseball-Reference WAR and 1.4 FanGraphs WAR, all essentially on the basis of his bat as his defense isn’t usually very good (though he made a sweet double play with a diving catch on Sunday). It’s worth noting that Canzone’s play does tend to come in streaks, with a 1.193 OPS since May 25 and a .745 OPS up to that point. But he has been a legitimate elite bat over the full course of the season: he is 93rd percentile in both expected average and expected slugging, 88th percentile in both hard-hit rate and launch angle sweet-spot rate - often times being elite at just one of those two is enough to create production; top-level numbers in both generates *lots* of production - and above 90th percentile in all three of average exit velocity, the exit velocity of his 90th percentile hardest hit ball (EV90), and maximum exit velocity. Even with his pedestrian strikeout and walk rates, these are more than the makings of a varsity athlete. Losing that production from a lineup already riddled with injuries and slumps is the last thing the Mariners team needs. But there is one player on the roster whose time may have come, as unlikely as it may have been before the season. ### This may or may not be the end of the line for Rob Refsnyder on the Mariners, but it probably should be. Over 11 at-bats in the series against his former team, Refsnyder got just one hit, and to call what happened a *hit* is more a little bit of generous home scorekeeping than it is honest assessment. After slowly building a decent spell of play towards the beginning of the month, Refsnyder has cooled off back to very absent play, fully solidifying a pattern that has produced a .139 season average and a .439 season OPS: he has brief streaks of quite solid performance interrupted by long spans of complete lifelessness. His colt stretches aren’t the kind of “batting .150 in a two-week stretch” freezers that good players go through, they’re Chris Davis-esque plunges deep into liquid nitrogen. The Mariners have two reasonable paths forward from here. If they still believe in Refsnyder *in general* but believe that the knee issue he has mentioned is the key item impacting his play (that is, that a fully healthy Refsnyder wouldn’t be having the season he’s having), they should send him to the IL longer-term so he can fully work out the issue. The 35-year-old Refsnyder has said that his knee problems have been more a factor of getting old than anything acute, however, and that makes a knee recovery-focused break more difficult to implement. The other option is to let him go. There’s a very good shot that it could wind up looking bad over the full season, as he could turn back to his strong-hitting ways in a new environment, but accepting that he’s unlikely to transform into the player they expected - at the very least, that he’s less likely to become that player than someone already doing well who the M’s can pick up - is probably the best course of action for the team. It’s worth mentioning that platoon players, especially righty platooners and DHs, can be prone to down years of awful magnitude. The Tigers’ Jahmai Jones, who had a .970 OPS against lefties in 2025, has a .537 OPS against left-handers this year. The Rangers’ Joc Pederson has had long stretches of mesmerizing ineptitude, most notable last year, and yet has a .753 OPS this season at the age of 34\. As already stated, it wouldn’t be very surprising if Refsnyder bounced back to usefulness somewhere. But at this point, it *would* be surprising if he did that for the Mariners. There are plenty of options to explore out there on the trade market, and for the sake of the M’s success this year, they should be looking extensively for a replacement (and it definitely wouldn’t hurt to get more warm bodies in their injury-riddled lineup). ### On Deck The Mariners have a rest day on Monday before going on a Midwest road trip to Pittsburgh and Cleveland for a combined six games. The Pirates are at an even 39-39, quite similar to the Mariners’ treading-water play (though with much diminished playoff hopes thanks to their stronger division), while the Guardians lead the AL Central with a 41-37 record. Sunday’s winning pitcher didn’t offer much of a negative view on the Mariners’ recent form, despite their 3-5 record in the past eight games. “I think we’re in a really good spot. Injuries are tough, obviously, I think we’re playing really good ball despite all that,” Gilbert said. “But to get that one today, I think that’s a big one going into the off day.” There’s a balancing act in attitude, of course, to keep positive but also keep cognizant of the team’s level of performance. They may be a half game up on the division, but their record is far from the line that really good ball clubs produce. Granted, Gilbert has been on the upswing in his recent outings, and there’s nothing that can be faulted of that.