The Mariners have had a tough run of games on this road trip. In particular, it seems the Florida heat may have gotten to the boys a bit, as the Mariners come into the final game of the first half of the season on a five-game losing streak.<\/p>\n
Things got off to an inauspicious start when Hancock took a line drive from Jonathan Aranda on the first pitch of the game off his throwing hand. Hancock would go on to finish the inning, all smiles and thumbs up, but to say the training staff and Wilson felt confident in that would be a lie. In the bottom of the second, Hancock walked Victor Mesa Jr. with two outs, and was promptly pulled from the game for Jos\u00e9 Ferrer, who ended the inning.<\/p>\n
Alright, so an unintentional bullpen day is incoming\u2026 when the Mariners have been struggling to score runs\u2026 and got blown out 6-1 the day before\u2026 no one would blame you if you started reaching for the remote. However, despite everything looking like the Mariners were cruising for a bruising, things didn\u2019t shake out that way.<\/p>\n
Top of the second, Josh Naylor got things started with a single. Garver followed with a walk, and Cole Young hit a single of his own, loading the bases for Victor Robles. Typically, when the Mariners get into this type of situation, many fans would get to witness a NOBLETIGER, a common phenomenon for the Mariners, but today things were different. Robles slapped a ball that sunk fast into the outfield, caught by a diving Mullins, allowing Naylor to score from third.<\/p>\n
Ok, maybe the Mariners aren\u2019t as dead in the water as we might have thought. I guess I\u2019ll settle back into the couch for a couple more innings. I mean, they may blow it, but at least they scored with runners on.<\/p>\n
Cole Young stole second as Weston Wilson struck out. Buddy Kennedy followed that up with a walk, bringing J.P. Crawford to the plate with two outs and the bases loaded again. J.P. proceeded to inside-out a pitch into left field for a double, scoring two more and putting the Mariners up 3-0 in the second.<\/p>\n
But the Mariners were far from done; this team was determined to go into the All-Star break on a high note. Hearing all the slander we have been putting on his name, Weston Wilson hit his second home run of the season to left field, extending the Mariners\u2019 lead to four.<\/p>\n
Buddy Kennedy reached on an error and was advanced to second by a single from J.P. Crawford, putting two men on for Randy Arozarena. Of course, sensing the attention shifting off of him for a moment, Randy hit a three-run homer to right field.<\/p>\n
The Mariners took a 7-0 lead, and didn\u2019t relinquish it from there. Jonathan Aranda did get a good swing in the 8th against Bazardo, though, and ended the shutout with a home run of his own.<\/p>\n
The Mariners were quick to respond as J.P. Crawford got another run back in the bottom of the 8th with a double, bringing around Buddy Kennedy.<\/p>\n
The double from Crawford was the final nail in the coffin for the Rays; if the Aranda home run had given them any momentum at all, it had quietly been snuffed out by the back-to-back doubles from Kennedy and Crawford in the bottom of the inning. Munoz entered in the bottom of the 9th to shut the door and end the Mariners chapter on the first half of the season.<\/p>\n
The Mariners finish the first half in second place in the AL West with a record of 48-49. This team has struggled a lot on the road this year, and that has been compounded by a lot of guys missing time with injury and just some plain old slumps from some of the more important batters in the lineup. But the first half is over now, we can only hope that this game is a sign of more to come in the second half of the season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Mariners have had a tough run of games on this road trip. In particular, it seems the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":750673,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2392],"tags":[5,620,4,619,65,77143,38422,3235],"class_list":["post-750672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-seattle-mariners","tag-baseball","tag-mariners","tag-mlb","tag-seattle","tag-seattle-mariners","tag-seattle-mariners-discussion","tag-seattle-mariners-game-threads","tag-seattlemariners"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116912915976101666","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=750672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/750673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=750672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=750672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=750672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}