One Step Closer: Mariners Take 5-3 Win Over Cardinals, Look to Sweep on Wednesday
SEATTLE, Wash. — Many things can be said about the 2025 Seattle Mariners, but one thing you can’t deny is that they’re exciting—and this goes all the way into the second week of September.
Whether or not there is magic in the clubhouse, this Mariners team is inching ever closer to a delight that the boys got a taste of three years ago but have not gotten since. Every day, a different set of heroes or villains stands up, and on Tuesday, it was a couple hitters who stepped up and a set of pitchers who did what they had to do.
Furious George Grinds Four
Mariners starter George Kirby came into his Tuesday start in an inconsistent funk. Over his past four starts, he had twice put in quality starts (giving up just three runs over 13 combined innings against the Guardians and Athletics) but had been lit up like a Christmas tree his other two outings, yielding 14 earned runs over 6 ⅔ combined innings against the Mets and Rays.
In his two blowup starts, Kirby’s opponents had missed on 22.5 percent of their swings. That figure is below average for MLB pitchers, but not necessarily terrible. It’s all about the quality of contact, not necessarily the quantity. But for the first three innings of Tuesday’s start, the Cardinals made contact on every single swing.
It was the second where St. Louis first did damage. Willson Contreras sent a full count heater into the outfield for a leadoff single and Nolan Gorman slapped the ball into somewhat shallow left. Had Arozarena played it safe, the ball would have dropped in for a single. Had he gotten a better jump on the ball, he would have caught it for the inning’s first out. But the Mariners left fielder dove for a ball that was a hair outside his reach, and by the time the ball reached the infield, Gorman stood on second with an RBI double. Thomas Saggese followed that up with a fairly long single, and the Redbirds took a two-run lead.
Kirby had fallen into the type of negative cycle that had dogged Seattle’s pitchers during their disastrous series in Tampa, and a lot of it had to do—unusually for Kirby—with first-pitch balls. Eight of 20 first pitches were thrown for balls. He had trouble with his release points, especially on the fastball, but he also suffered from close misses on his secondary pitches.
Luckily for the Mariners, the next three Cardinal batters didn’t get any good contact, and Kirby exited the inning with limited damage. The third inning went by quickly with the help of a double play, but the beleaguered Seattle starter had a grueling grind in the fourth.
The inning started out well for Kirby, who got his first swing and miss (and then his first strikeout) against Nolan Gorman. His first two pitches to Thomas Saggese were painted on the black, but he tried four times to paint a backdoor fastball—and missed just off the plate each time. Pedro Pagés knocked a single to right to put runners at the corners with one out, but Kirby lucked out as Victor Scott II swung on a full count sinker that was so far inside as to bounce off his back foot.
Kirby fell behind José Fermín 3-1 to continue his fourth-inning slog, but it seemed for a moment that he finally got out of it as Fermín was called out on a close play at first, but replay review showed him easily safe at first and the third Cardinal run came home. A seven-pitch walk drew it out even further, but Iván Herrera weakly grounded out to finally end the inning.
It took 36 pitches for Kirby to finally finish the fourth, a tally that worked his count all the way up to 85. Going into the fifth, Dan Wilson went to his bullpen.
Duality of Randy
Arozarena’s defensive miscue may have led to a run in the second, but the Mariners didn’t add him for his glove. Going into Tuesday’s game, Arozarena had a .791 OPS, 87 runs scored, 30 doubles, 26 homers, and 69 RBIs. His .343 on-base percentage has earned him the leadoff role in the Mariners lineup.
His at-bat in the third inning had a world of opportunity. With the Mariners down by a pair of runs, Victor Robles and J.P. Crawford led off the inning by getting on base to turn the order back over to the top without a single out.
With a 2-0 count, Cardinals starter Matthew Liberatore tried to get back into the at-bat with a fastball right over the dish. The Mariners have had a fair bit of struggles taking advantage of the middle-middle meatball, but at that moment, there was not a hint of difficulty in Arozarena’s swing.
A mighty boom rang out in T-Mobile Park as the ball was struck with every fiber of the bat head. A little over six seconds later, it bounced off the facade of the upper deck in left center for a three-run homer.
The Mariner left fielder finished with four RBIs in the game due to a bases-loaded sacrifice fly in the fourth inning that constituted Seattle’s fifth run. He did have one more rough moment in the eighth inning, however, as he was caught stealing for the final out of that frame—not that it ended up mattering. Arozarena now has 27 home runs and 27 stolen bases, just three of each away from his first 30/30 season.
Grumper’s Giant Swing
The fan favorite going into the deadline may have been Eugenio Suárez, but the biggest impact from the 2025 trade deadline has so far been Josh Naylor. Over 38 games with Seattle in 2025, Naylor had hit six doubles, seven homers, stolen 14 bases, and accrued an OPS of .759. Now, that last figure is 50 points lower than what it was for Arizona, but it is still solidly above average—and solidly above the production Seattle had previously been getting at first base.
With a knotted contest in the bottom of the fourth and one man out, Liberatore made his second costly mistake of the ballgame, grooving a 2-1 sinker right down the pipe to Naylor. A violent swing erupted from the left-handed batter’s box as Naylor walloped the pitch deep into the right center field stands. He tossed the bat nearly all the way to the Mariner dugout.
The next three men reached and set up Arozarena’s aforementioned sacrifice fly to round out Seattle’s scoring. Although Arozarena drove in 80 percent of Seattle’s runs, Naylor’s nuclear bomb gave the left fielder a run for his money when it came to memorability.
It behooves us to mention a stat that reminds us Seattle’s first baseman is somewhat unique among hitters in the history of third millennium baseball—he likes T-Mobile Park. All too often, the Mariners have traded for a strong hitter only to find that he and the not-so-friendly confines of their home stadium don’t mesh well. That is plainly not the case when it comes to Naylor, who went into Tuesday’s game slashing .352/.417/.667 in Seattle during 2025.
“I mean, I feel comfortable everywhere, to be honest, but I really, absolutely enjoy playing here,” Naylor noted after the game. “Coming here as an opponent, I thought it was a super cool stadium and the fans were always electric. I think you see well here, personally.”
Bullpen Locks Down Again (With Julio’s Help)
Caleb Ferguson, Eduard Bazardo, Gabe Speier, Matt Brash, and Andrés Muñoz—combined, these men gave up just two hits over five innings pitched, struck out seven, and did not yield a single run.
It was especially good to see another bounceback effort from Caleb Ferguson. His previous appearance during Seattle’s Saturday smackdown in Atlanta was a clean sheet, but before then, he had given up four earned runs in his previous three appearances (totaling just 1 ⅓ innings pitched). Ferguson’s stuff was on point as he struck out two during his frame.
Bazardo was as filthy as usual, as was Gabe Speier, but Speier got some help from his good friend in center field. The first two outs of the seventh went by quickly, but Iván Herrera scorched a ball into the right center field gap. The summer of 2025 has often seen a notable absence of barnburning plays from Julio Rodriguez, but the No-Fly Zone was in full force on Tuesday, as he swiftly tracked a fly ball all the way into the gap and made a snow-cone running catch.
Matt Brash was an excellent pitcher when he made use of just the fastball and slider in his first two seasons. In 2025, however, the backbreaking slider has seen a counterpart secondary pitch develop: a King Felix-esque fading changeup. Two Cardinals struck out on that pitch in the top of the eighth, while another unfortunate soul faced the slider and went down like the others.
By the time Muñoz came out to the mound, nearly all the energy had been sapped from St. Louis. Despite a two-out single, the Mariner closer got his 34th save.
On Deck
The American League West is turning into a close race as the season winds down. With Seattle’s win and Houston’s loss, the Astros are ahead by just a single game with 17 games remaining for each team. The Texas Rangers, meanwhile, are powering through a heap of injuries and have crept up to a deficit of two and a half games from the AL West title—and they trail Seattle by just one and a half games.
The Mariners will be going for the sweep on Wednesday evening, as the objective becomes maddeningly simple over the final push: win.
