Even a sudden surprise rainshower couldn’t dampen the Mariners’ bats, as the post trade-deadline, new-look Mariners opened their second series at home against the White Sox tonight with a commanding 8-3 win, spurred by contributions from three different players the Mariners were able to acquire from the Diamondbacks over the past few trade deadlines.
The game also featured a strong performance by one of the Mariners’ homegrown players. Bryan Woo was almost perfect tonight. He made one mistake to his second batter of the game, leaving a fastball in the filet mignon part of the plate that Lenyn Sosa crushed for a solo home run. After that, however, Woo locked in; he gave up one other hit, a double to Kyle Teel off a changeup that Teel was able to get a handle on and drive into the right field corner. After that, though, Woo didn’t allow another hit and struck out nine over seven strong innings. If the game had been closer, he might have been asked for an eighth inning, as he finished the seventh at just 83 pitches. It was a solid bounceback by Woo, who was stung by the long ball in his last outing.
“Solo homers I guess are part of the game now,” said Woo postgame. “Obviously you don’t want to give up too many, and last start was definitely frustrating. But it’s just about not letting that confidence waver is the big thing. You’re going to give up solo shots. That’s just kind of how the game is now. As long as they don’t come in bunches or you’re letting guys on and then doing damage, as long as you minimize the damage you give your team a chance to win.”
Woo was able to minimize that damage, and in the second inning, Dominic Canzone answered back the White Sox’s homer with a solo blast of his own, a two-out shot that tied up the game.
It was a nice night for Canzone, who had two hits and a walk (as well as a nice running catch in the outfield) as he continues to display some better selectivity at the plate. Two years after coming over in the contentious trade that sent Paul Sewald to Arizona, Canzone seems to have developed into the kind of hitter the Mariners hoped they were acquiring: a contact-oriented hitter who can control the zone and hit for power.
“[Canzone’s] been able to stay on the pitches away from him really well,” said Dan Wilson. “Whether it’s a right-handed or a left-handed pitcher, he’s been able to use the middle of the field and stay on it, and that’s led to a lot of nice at-bats by him. We know he’s got the power when he gets a count that’s in his favor, and he finds the barrel. The ball jumps off his bat. He’s really done a nice job being a complete hitter…That’s been a really big part of his growth.”
The Mariners were able to charge ahead and never look back in the fourth inning thanks to another former Diamondback (and former and now current Mariner), Eugenio Suárez. Despite a warm welcome this weekend while facing the Rangers, Geno wasn’t able to connect with his first homer no matter how hard the packed crowds at T-Mobile Park willed it. Tonight’s crowd was a little more modest—just shy of 31,000 fans gleefully clutching their Ichiro Suzuki Funko pops—but equally loud when Suárez connected on this first-pitch cutter from Davis Martin.
Suárez might have provided the go-ahead blast that opened the floodgates, but the star of the show tonight was Naylor, who had two hits (including his own two-run home run) and a walk, stole two bases, and cleaned up a couple tricky throws at first base, showing a graceful athleticism one might not expect from the stoutly-built Canadian. He was seemingly everywhere on the field tonight, impacting the game in all facets. In the top of the eighth inning, a long and laborious affair where Casey Legumina loaded the bases on a double and two walks, it was of course Naylor who ended the inning with a fine catch in shallow right field. He was on base for Geno’s homer after scalding a ball 107.5 mph right at Josh Rojas, who got Charlie Brown’d on the play and was given an unkind if mostly deserved error.
Perhaps most entertainingly, he was involved in an unlikely double steal in the sixth inning that turned into two more runs for the Mariners. Davis Martin—for whom regression came all at once after he squashed the Mariners down over seven-plus innings in Chicago the last time these two teams met—opened the sixth with back-to-back walks of Naylor and Geno, who then promptly swiped second and third. For Naylor, it was already his eighth steal as a Mariner, which puts him into a tie for second all time for a Mariners first baseman in a single season, joining Adam Kennedy in 2011 and Logan Morrison in 2015. Kennedy did it in 114 games; LoMo in 156. Naylor has had 11. He only needs three more to tie the all-time record set by Dan Meyer in 1977, or one to pass him.
“That was a really smart play by Josh,” said Suárez postgame. “I follow him. I played with him with the DBacks this year and that’s how he plays the game. If you give him a chance, he’s going to steal that base…He might not looks that fast, but he’s always smart. He knows when to go. He reads the pitchers. He knows what kind of pitch he might be throwing in that situation and he gets a really good jump every time. He’s not the fastest guy but now he’s got almost 20 bags…I always gotta watch him and be ready at once because at some point he’s gonna try to go to third. So I gotta have a good jump too to be safe at second.”
“He’s always one step in front of everybody else. He’s a really smart player.”
That would prove to be important because the next batter, Jorge Polanco, delivered this single to break the game open. That would be the blow knocking Martin out of the game, but the Mariners were able to add still another run, small-balling around Polanco thanks to a productive groundout from Cole Young.
But Naylor wasn’t done yet. The White Sox sent out lefty Bryan Hudson in the seventh to turn Cal Raleigh around and also face Naylor, and Julio and Naylor teamed up to make them pay for that decision. Julio started with a one-out single, a sharply-hit line drive, and Naylor turned on a sweeper that wound up middle-middle for his first home run at T-Mobile Park, putting tonight’s game safely out of reach despite Jackson Kowar giving up two solo shots in the ninth in his first game in about a week.
It was a fun win featuring contributions from Seattle’s newest trade deadline acquisitions, but also a free agent signing (Polanco), home grown talents (Woo, Young, Julio), and another trade deadline acquisition from a “soft sell” year in Canzone, who has been a slower burn developmentally but is starting to round into his own. Even when this lineup is not firing on all cylinders (Randy Arozarena, Cal Raleigh, and J.P. Crawford were all hitless tonight with a combined five strikeouts and no walks, and it’s being generous to Cal and not so generous to Randy to combine those strikeouts), tonight is a testament to the power the Mariners have built up and down their lineup; a fearsome thought when combined with a pitching performance like Woo’s tonight.
“There’s no easy pocket for the whole lineup,” said Woo postgame. “One through five or six all has like 20-plus bombs, and the bottom three or so all have power, all can run, all pesky. So there’s no fun parts of it, which is exactly how you want to be.”