SEATTLE — After the final out was recorded, the chants of his name boomed through T-Mobile Park.

GE-NO! GE-NO! GE-NO!

The city of Seattle can sleep easy tonight, and they can thank the keeper of Good Vibes, Eugenio Suárez.

Salk: Game 5 win tells the 2025 Seattle Mariners’ story in 3 ways

Suárez delivered the biggest hit of his career and one that will forever be a part of the franchise’s playoff history during Friday’s pivotal Game 5 of the American League Championship Series, slugging a go-ahead grand slam in the bottom of the eighth inning to lead the Mariners to a 6-2 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays.

Now Seattle, which holds a 3-2 advantage in the best-of-seven set, is only one win away from its first trip to the World Series.

Suárez salami gives Mariners 3-2 lead in ALCS over Blue Jays

“I’ve been waiting for games like this my whole career. Today, I had it,” Suárez said postgame with his two daughters sitting right next to him. “Today, I had it in front of our crowd, in front of my family, my two daughters, my wife, and the moment is very special right now. My emotions right now, it’s very high. I feel so grateful. God give me the ability to do something good for this city, and the vibe is always going to be high.”

After hitting the massive grand slam tonight, Geno showed up to his presser with his daughters. pic.twitter.com/Ib6w0ojxYh

— Zac Hereth (@ZacHereth) October 18, 2025

The vibes actually hadn’t been all that high for Mariners fans watching Suárez since he came back to Seattle in a deal with Arizona before the trade deadline.

When the Mariners reacquired the slugging third baseman on July 31, he was on his way to perhaps the best season of his 12-year career. Suárez was hitting .248 at the time, which is on the high side for the high-power, low-contact slugger. He had already mashed 36 home runs and driven in a league-high 87 runs. And the .897 OPS he was sporting had him on pace for the second-highest mark of his career.

But the impact of a move to a much less hitter-friendly environment in the Pacific Northwest showed up rather quickly.

Suárez went 3 for 35 in his first nine games back in a Mariners uniform, and things never got much better. In 53 regular-season games after the trade, he hit just .189 with a .682 OPS. The saving grace was he was at least still providing some power, belting 13 homers to bring his total to a career-high-tying 49 on the season. But it still wasn’t nearly as impactful as what he had provided to the Diamondbacks through the first 106 games of his season.

The struggles to produce consistently in a Mariners uniform carried into the postseason with a 2-for-21 performance with nine strikeouts in the AL Division Series.

“It’s very hard. Obviously, you want to do something … for the team, for the fans,” Suárez said of the struggles. “Me especially, I just handle it in a good way.”

As usual, the always-positive Suárez’s belief in himself never wavered through it all. The vibes may not have been very high for Mariners fans watching his at-bats, but they were still at skyscraper heights in the third baseman’s mind.

“You can’t tell if he’s in a slump, you can’t tell what he’s going through, because he’s always picking everybody else up,” manager Dan Wilson said. “He’s just a selfless player, and that’s why everybody in the clubhouse roots for Geno so hard, because he just doesn’t think about himself at all.”

That sort of mindset isn’t lost on his teammates.

“Geno’s a true pro. I guess what I mean by that is he doesn’t let results dictate who he is as a person, who he is as a teammate, and how he goes about his business every day,” catcher Cal Raleigh said. “Obviously he hit a little rough patch there a week or two ago, but it never fazed him. He stayed with his approach and he trusted himself.”

Suárez’s bat started to awaken once Seattle traveled north of the border for the ALCS. He checked in with a base hit in both games at Rogers Centre and did the same in Games 3 and 4 in Seattle.

In Game 5, the power surge Suárez is capable of providing finally happened. He slugged a solo home run on the first pitch he saw from Blue Jays starter Kevin Gausman in the second inning, giving the Mariners an early 1-0 lead. And in the eighth, he sent T-Mobile Park into a frenzied celebration with one mighty swing that put his team ahead for good.

“I have a good amount of beautiful moments in my career, but today is something else,” Suárez said. “Hit that grand slam and help my team win games in the postseason, big game here in front of our fans. They have been waiting for a long time, and myself too. I’ve been waiting for this moment my whole career.”

More Seattle Mariners ALCS coverage

• Jon Morosi: Two big keys to Mariners’ dramatic Game 5 triumph
• Hear Rick Rizzs’ Mariners radio call of Eugenio Suárez’s grand salami
• Stacy Rost: Mariners’ trade for Suárez did more than make them better
• Mariners’ defense shines with web gems in pivotal ALCS Game 5 win
• Drayer: Why Seattle Mariners are using Bryan Woo out of the bullpen