Mariners Shove Second Straight Shutout of Blue Jays, Win Second Straight Series
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Seattle Mariners first baseman Josh Naylor (12) hits an RBI-single against the Toronto Blue Jays during the eighth inning at T-Mobile Park. Mandatory Credit: Joe Nicholson-Imagn Images [/caption]
How quickly things can turn around, how fleeting streaks of play can be.
That is both a consolation and a warning for the Mariners, who finished off a 5-1 homestand on Sunday with a 4-0 win over the Toronto Blue Jays. Just a week prior, they were reeling from one of the worst losses of the season, out of first with a losing record. They are now in first place by a game and a half and three games above .500.
It’s a good start, but the team still needs to build upon it with as many series wins as possible over the rest of the season. No team is as good as they look when they win nor as bad as they look when they lose, but every time the M’s look like the best versions of themselves, they inspire a little bit more confidence in others and in their own hearts.
Emerson Hancock had one of his best starts of the season, shoving seven scoreless.
With the piggyback permanently on hold, Emerson Hancock had the runway for a full start on Sunday. Going into his outing, however there were questions as to whether he could deal as well as he had earlier in the season.
Despite a career-best 3.47 ERA, 3.77 FIP, and 1.048 WHIP this year, Hancock’s last four starts had seen him give up 13 earned runs in 20 innings, an average of five frames per start. He had struggled to locate his sweeper during these outings, a fact that left him vulnerable to teams willing to ambush the fastball. These teams additionally benefited from some luck that his opponents hadn’t seen as much during his first couple months of work.
The sweeper didn’t materialize for Hancock on Sunday, but with the way his fastballs were playing and the way the Blue Jays were swinging (or more accurately, not swinging) the bat that afternoon, it seldom mattered. Toronto got a man in scoring position exactly once, with a Vladimir Guerrero Jr. double in the first inning being that lone big threat. Hancock worked clean innings in the third, fourth, and fifth, with a lone single in the second and two walks in the sixth - separated there by a double play - forming the little resistance the Jays produced.
Hancock only got five strikeouts during the whole game, but a 33% whiff rate on the Jays’ swings and a 32% called strike plus whiff rate on all pitches betrayed a level of dominance that hasn’t been in Hancock’s corner for a while. Toronto hit the ball hard four times out of 17 (24%) when they put it in play against Hancock and the Mariners starter had no innings of 20 or more pitches, as the M’s starter used the Jays’ aggressiveness against them.
“I just think that’s what happens when you are aggressive. Sometimes there’s a single, sometimes they are first pitch outs,” Hancock said. “And so we always wanna air on the side of throwing a ton of strikes, and if you’re able to get the first pitch outs, those are always great for us.”
Some of this dominance was the fault of the Blue Jays, who completed the game having gone scoreless in 24 straight innings. But it was up to the Mariners pitchers in the series to take advantage of their opponents’ weakness during the series, and they did so effectively over the course of the three-game set. The worst performance by any M’s starter in the series was a six-inning, two-run quality start from Luis Castillo on Friday, but it was still a quality start and still marked a run of six consecutive quality starts from six different starters.
It’s often said that hitting is contagious, but perhaps that is true of pitching as well.
“I think you build off each one, and I think you see what the guy does well the night before,” Hancock said. “And it just, in a way, makes you want to go out there and continue to hold up the standard every time you get a chance to have an outing.”
The meaning of “winning fixes everything” is quite evident from these showings. The exact setup of the pitching staff and the Schrödinger’s piggyback rotation that never materialized matter little when the entire rotation is shoving like Tom Seaver. As for Hancock, Mariners manager Dan Wilson contended that Hancock was building upon seeds of success sown away from home soil.
“I thought that the bounce-back really started in Cleveland, I thought that was an exceptional outing, too. And this one followed that one up,” Wilson said; though Hancock didn’t make it out of the sixth inning then, he did only yield one run. “Even today, as he got into the sixth, seventh inning, a walk here, but he was able to pick himself up, get the ground ball, get the double play.”
The Mariners scratched four runs together even as an effective Trey Yesavage took the mound for Toronto.
Unlike on Saturday, when the team put together a complete batting clinic over the whole lineup, the runs on Sunday were far more hard-fought. Jays starter Trey Yesavage did have somewhat shaky control at times, but he kept the M’s nearly as off-balance as Hancock kept the Jays.
But unlike Friday, the Mariners put some runs on the board. A single, walk, and soft grounder made for runners on second and third with one out in the bottom of the third and although Cal Raleigh didn’t get a hit in that opportunity, he still brought home a run with a sacrifice fly.
Seattle also took advantage of shortstop Ernie Clement’s uneasy defense at that position. With regular shortstop Andrés Giménez taking the day off, Clement had to take on those duties, and a bad throw allowed Cole Young on first with one away in the fourth. Mitch Garver, who had already seen an opportunity to knock someone home in the second, walked up to the dish and saw a 2-2 mistake from Yesavage.
Garver made the game 3-0 with one swing of the bat. That usually wouldn’t be a very secure lead, but with an Emerson Hancock dealing smoke and a Blue Jays batting core that couldn’t get started, it was more than enough to give Seattle a definite upper hand. Yesavage finished the game with six innings pitched and seven strikeouts, though the Jays bullpen slipped and allowed an extra run in the eighth.
How should the Mariners react to Colt Emerson’s slump?
There wasn’t much to dislike for the Mariners about their solid win - though they perhaps got more runs than their overall offensive output might usually produce - but they did have another down day for shortstop hitting.
Colt Emerson initially took the majors by something of a storm when he got called up, slashing .271/.352/.583 in his first 15 games with Seattle. But during that span, he had a 36.4% hard-hit rate, .333 batting average on balls in play (BABIP), and .607 StatCast expected OPS, all indicating that he had been benefitting from some good luck.
In the 25 games between then and Sunday’s game, the rookie shortstop has seen his fair share of struggles, slashing .185/.250/.346 with a .244 BABIP and .493 expected OPS. Those two advanced measures point in opposite directions - the low BABIP suggests bad luck and the expected production being lower than the (already low) actual production suggests that he has even gotten lucky in his slump
In the course of his recent at-bats, Emerson’s issues against the fastball have worsened while his chase rate climbed from 26.5% in his first 15 games to 41.3% in his following 25 games. This has been the worst symptom of a general collapse in swing decision ability, as his in-zone swing rate simultaneously decreased from 68.3% to 63.6%.
As a result, his strikeout rate went up from 27.8% in his first 15 games to 36.4% in the 25 following contests while his walk rate splits at 9.3% in the first sample of games and 6.8% in the second sample.
Emerson’s issues continued apace at the plate on Sunday. He swung at 11 of the 12 pitches he faced, missed seven of those swings, and didn’t hit a single ball in play. His three strikeouts were on four pitches, five pitches, and three pitches. He now has a full-year slash line of .212/.283/.424, with his seven home runs buoying the majority of his production.
There is certainly a need for Emerson to slow things down and exercise greater control when he’s in the box. His current slump doesn’t have a whole lot of implications for his long-term trajectory, but it does raise the question of demotion this year when (or if) Brendan Donovan returns to the lineup.
But that question hinges on more than Emerson’s current batting production: it is about his production defensively at shortstop - he made multiple strong plays on Sunday - and his development facing MLB pitching. That development is being hindered as his approach appears to fray 41 games into his career, however, and one wonders what the organization’s red lines are.
On Deck
The Mariners sit at 47-44 and have six games remaining until the All-Star Break, all away from home on a Florida road trip to Miami and Tampa.
Both of those teams have put up better seasons than the M’s so far, with the Marlins holding a 49-42 record and the Rays capping the American League with a 52-35 record. But given that the Marlins play in the much more competitive National League, they enter this series tied with the Cardinals for the third wild card spot.
The lowly Angels and struggling Blue Jays were one animal, but Marlins and Rays will be entirely different beasts.
