Sluggish Mariners Start Hitting Late, Drop Series to Yankees
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="8139"]
Seattle Mariners pitcher George Kirby (68) pitches to the New York Yankees during the first inning at T-Mobile Park. Mandatory Credit: Steven Bisig-Imagn Images [/caption]
Things won’t usually go well when you are scoreless for 16 straight innings and score one run in the span of 23 innings. Seattle dealt with quite a lot of those stretches in 2025, and even with a bolstered offense for the new year, it looks like that issue won’t go away, even if it’s the heart of the lineup in the doghouse this time.
Seattle made it interesting in the late innings, but too many mistakes on all sides of the ball gave Cole Young, one of the M’s riding a hot streak, the unfortunate task of being the final out in a 5-3 loss to the New York Yankees.
George Kirby deals through five but gets some dear punishment from Paul Goldschmidt after walking two in the sixth.
If “Furious George” had forgotten how much he hates walks before Wednesday’s action, his second start of the season surely reminded him. All three batters Kirby walked came around to score, starting in the first inning as Cody Bellinger walked and stole second before Ben Rice scorched a double down the right field line for New York’s first run.
Kirby settled in by the second. He mixed in basically all of his pitches, though his excellent fastball command was offset by the fact he depended on swing and misses on many of his curveballs, sliders, and changeups. But when the Yanks made contact in these middle innings - and during the first inning, to be fair, Rice’s double was as much on Josh Naylor not getting to the ball, as Kirby buried his slider and got the swing he wanted - not much of it did the visitors any good, and Kirby only threw 44 pitches from the second through fifth innings.
As so often happens when the lineup card turns over for the third time in the sixth inning, however, the Yankees made their adjustments against the Seattle starter. Trent Grisham held off a couple of close balls to draw a six-pitch walk, and after Kirby dealt quickly with Aaron Judge and Bellinger, it was once again Ben Rice who gave him fits, laying off some close pitches (including a two-strike check swing) and outlasting Kirby for a free pass of his own on a buried changeup.
Paul Goldschmidt was not the man circled on the lineup card as the guy to deal the dagger, as the future Hall-of-Famer is mostly taking on a platoon role with New York in his twilight days. But some of the old Goldschmidt still shone through on Wednesday against a grooved 1-1 fastball from Kirby, as he torched it into the bullpen for the first home run on either side in the series.
Seattle was now in a fairly deep hole, especially with how anemic the offense had been up until that point.
Cal Raleigh salvages a bit from his bad start to the season, but it’s still not looking great for the almost-MVP catcher.
It was pretty obvious going into the season that Cal Raleigh had very long odds of repeating his near-MVP 60-homer campaign from 2025. Mariners brass, despite their quite extensive history of relying on too many players to play at their best level in years past, didn’t enter the year reliant on Raleigh to repeat last season’s production.
But they are relying on him to put up an All Star-caliber season, something that was one of baseball’s foregone conclusions coming into 2026. Dan Szymborski’s projection system (ZiPS) had his 20th percentile wins above replacement (meaning better than just 20% of possibilities) at 4.3 for the year, which would still make him one of the best catchers in the game.
So far in 2026, however, the only continuity from last year has been uneasy defense. Raleigh declined somewhat from his Platinum Glove 2024 early on in 2025 and, for those not distracted by his mammoth home run pace, this decline became notable by the second half. Between Aug. 18 and Sept. 26, a full 22 straight runners swiped a bag against Raleigh’s arm. It became more notable during the playoffs, when two passed balls were called against him and he threw out just one of seven runners.
Even in that 20th percentile ZiPS projection, however, his defensive expectations carry him far: his offensive top line in that scenario consists of a .208/.306/.447 slash line. That’s certainly above average, but nowhere near good enough to justify him hitting second (where a modern team puts its best hitter!) in an ostensibly stacked Mariners lineup.
What this means is that there is a clear worst-case scenario, which entails a continued defensive decline and low-end offense marked by excess swings and misses. That’s exactly what happened over the first six games and change of the season, though he began to turn it around late on Wednesday. Raleigh’s 1-4 game with two strikeouts brought him to 4-25 (.143) with 15 strikeouts and three walks, a 53.6% strikeout rate to begin the year. Meanwhile, although he made one dime of a throw to nab Bellinger on Tuesday, that good deed was duly punished with two airmailed throws into center field.
Raleigh fought back against his demons in the final innings, however, putting to rest any ideas of him suffering a full Chris Davis, though a 2025 Adley Rutschman (sorry, Baltimore) is still in the outside realm of possibility. The top of the eighth ended on a bullet of a throw to second to catch Aaron Judge swiping second, but it was the bottom of the eighth that was his big test.
Dominic Canzone and Cole Young had knocked singles into the outfield against Yankees reliever Camilo Doval and the lower-order lefties were joined on the basepaths by Brendan Donovan, who walked on four pitches. Aaron Boone brought in closer David Bednar to face his fellow Team USA star Raleigh with one of the game’s classic situations: late innings, down by four, bases loaded, and two outs.
Raleigh’s bat, it could be said, took a half measure, knocking in two with a single to right rather than breaking his slump with a game-tying slam. But a half measure was a whole lot better than the way he had been swinging the bat up to that point, and it put the M’s right back in the game.
The Dipoto-era Mariners have had a blind spot in not using high-leverage guys with small deficits, and Ben Rice expanded the Yankees’ lead against Criswell in the ninth.
It was good to see Jose A. Ferrer show up for the top of the seventh even with the M’s down four runs, and he had his cleanest outing to date for his new ball club. Granted, he faced the bottom of the order, but he had the Yankees clearly on the back foot during his 13 pitches of work.
By the top of the eighth, with the M’s still lifeless at the dish, manager Dan Wilson brought in Cooper Criswell. He had dealt the Mariners’ first save of the season in three-inning mop-up work against the battered Guardians on Sunday and continued to look solid in the eighth inning Wednesday, mixing up his four pitches and keeping the top of New York’s order on their toes.
But there’s a reason Criswell isn’t a third starter or ace reliever type despite his crafty stuff and hefty movement, and that’s because his iffy control leads him to walk a few too many guys and leave a few too many pitches out over the plate. He went back out for the top of the ninth, despite the Mariners clawing back two runs and both Andrés Muñoz and Matt Brash warming up in the bullpen.
Only using high-leverage relievers when the team is tied or has the lead isn’t a Wilson-specific issue; his predecessor Scott Servais did this too. Granted, he was typically dealing with much weaker rosters with much less chance of coming back, but a team with World Series aspirations shouldn’t be sending a message to its players that any late deficit is unrecoverable. Muñoz hadn’t pitched since Saturday and had a guaranteed travel day ahead of him, so it wasn’t like there were too many exhaustion management considerations.
Ben Rice took one of these mistakes from Criswell onto the tarp in right center field, breaking some of the M’s momentum with the Yankees’ fifth run of the game.
The bats’ seven-inning dry spell made the final rallies too little, too late, even as hot-hitting guys at the bottom of the order tried to make up for the absence of Julio Rodríguez and Josh Naylor, the latter of whom grounded out to first to begin the last of the ninth.
Randy Arozarena, who has quietly racked up a .775 OPS in his first week this year, rocketed a ball to third to begin Seattle’s last rally. Yankee third baseman Ryan McMahon probably should have made the hot corner play, but it caromed off his glove, grazed his cap, and rolled towards the left field line for a double. Dominic Canzone stroked a two-out single to bring home Arozarena, and despite being completely out of the game for much of the afternoon, the M’s had the tying run at the plate.
Bednar faced a Cole Young as desperate as ever to keep himself and his team in the game. The Mariners’ second baseman fouled away five good pitches on his way to a full count and got Bednar to pump a heater that rode a little too far over the plate. But Young made contact about a quarter of an inch too low, missing a little of the barrel and flying out to Aaron Judge on the warning track.
It was a good sign of life from their young infielder, but the Mariners needed to get the heart of the order back up and running to give themselves a better chance to win. Aside from Raleigh’s eighth inning pair of RBIs, the two through four trio haven’t been able to put good contact on the ball. Naylor has been making contact consistently, but a lot of it is weak contact and rolled over grounders. Rodríguez’ imbalanced swing mechanics continue to limit his ability to be consistent, but as time goes on, it becomes less and less likely that the M’s will bite the bullet and commit to what could potentially be months of bad production in order to rebuild it from the ground up.
On Deck
The M’s will have a rest day as they travel to Anaheim to face the Angels on Friday. J.P. Crawford is supposed to return to the team for the three-game set against the Angels, Seattle’s first road action of the 2026 season.
Bryan Woo will be making his second start of the season for Seattle while Reid Detmers will be on the mound for the Halos.
