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<\/a><\/p>\nProgress: sometimes it is linear, and sometimes, not so much.<\/p>\n
The Mariners got on the board in the fourth thanks to some good old-fashioned chaos. Arozarena hit a ball right at Giants third baseman Casey Schmitt who decided it would be nice to send the ball on a scenic tour of Seattle, allowing Randy to get to second; he advanced to third on a Cal Raleigh flyout and scored easily on a Josh Naylor single. Naylor then stole second, because he is a chaos demon wearing polyester pants, and then scored on a game-tying single from Weston Wilson. It is important to have a niche, and in this inning everyone was tucked snugly inside their own personal niches: Randy being a Grade A Annoyance in the box and on the bases, trailing a cloud of chaos behind him like Pigpen; Josh Naylor singling on a pitch located at eye level and causing every Little League coach watching to wail in agony; and Weston Wilson being Professionally Right-Handed.<\/p>\n
The Mariners weren\u2019t able to add on but did keep the pressure on Ray, as Colt Emerson followed with a single and J.P. Crawford walked to load the bases for Julio Rodr\u00edguez. Julio flew out to end the inning, but the Mariners had managed to put 79 pitches on Ray by the end of the fourth.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, Logan Gilbert wasn\u2019t able to deliver a shutdown inning in the fifth. Maybe it was the long layoff, but Gilbert wasn\u2019t sharp when he came out for thie fifth, walking leadoff hitter Willy Adames on some not close pitches. Adames advanced to second on a bunt and scored on a go-ahead RBI double from Luis Arraez, who got on a slider that didn\u2019t slide enough. Gilbert rebounded to strike out Eldridge on a slider, but the Giants now held the lead.<\/p>\n
The Mariners were able to tie it back up in the bottom of the inning, taking advantage of a tiring Robbie Ray. Ray spammed Young with sliders off the plate again, like he had in the first at-bat, but this time Young made an adjustment, getting a slider on the plate and pulling it sharply (101.3 EV) into right field for a leadoff single. Randy followed him with a single of his own, this one at 105.7 mph off the bat, taking over the honorary Dom Canzone big brother role of \u201canything you can do, I can do better.\u201d The Giants pulled Ray for righty Sam Hentges, who got Cal Raleigh to ground into a double play on a curveball, but the run still scored, tying things back up. But with two outs, the Mariners couldn\u2019t continue to add on.<\/p>\n
However, this time Gilbert was able to deliver the shutdown sixth, capping his day at 95 pitches and ten strikeouts – pretty good work, considering how the day had started. Also of note: Gilbert delivered contact-monster Luis Arraez back-to-back strikeouts in his first two at-bats, the first time Arraez had struck out more than once in a game all season, a fact eagerly shared by Bryce Miller when Logan came into the dugout. When informed actually Miller was underselling it and that this was the first time that\u2019s happened to Arraez in two years, Gilbert couldn\u2019t contain a look of wonder and an involuntary \u201cgolly.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Giants sent righty Adrian Houser out to the mound for the sixth, allowing Luke Raley to step in for Weston Wilson and immediately make his presence known. This is just the Mariners\u2019 second pinch-hit home run of the year, and I\u2019d forgive you for not believing who hit the first. Hilariously, this is Raley\u2019s second pinch-hit homer, and they both have come against the Giants. Again, it\u2019s important to establish your niche.<\/p>\n
With the Mariners clinging to a one-run lead, Eduard Bazardo took over on the mound for Gilbert. Jung Hoo Lee immediately hit the most annoying BABIP flyball single ever off the Bazardvark, which must have really ticked him off because he then rattled off about as filthy a string of strikeouts as I remember from him this year: first he put Willy Adames in a blender on a sweeper, then nailed Grant McCray on the same sweeper for a three-pitch strikeout. Nine-hole hitter Drew Cavanaugh actually made Bazardo work, getting ahead 3-1 and then fouling off a couple pitches, but he too was subject to the bite of the Zard Dog, who punched Cavanaugh out looking on an absolutely filthy sinker.<\/p>\n
Everybody has a niche, but Cole Young\u2019s has been harder to pin down this season. Sometimes it\u2019s Gold Glove Cole; sometimes it\u2019s Clutch Cole when there\u2019s runners in scoring position; quietly it\u2019s been Iron Man Cole, playing in every game this season, a feat only accomplished by five other players in MLB. Lately, though, it\u2019s been Cole Power. With Julio aboard on a leadoff single, Young saw a first-pitch changeup from Houser he liked the look of and promptly sent it over the right-field wall for two very important insurance runs. Even more importantly for me, people who enjoy symmetry, this made three runs scored via small ball\/chaos ball vs. three runs scored via home run, the optimal mix for this lineup.<\/p>\n
With the bullpen breathing a little easier, Gabe Speier and Andr\u00e9s Mu\u00f1oz combined for two shutout innings to keep the Giants pinned in place. Speier had to do a little wiggling to get around a four-pitch walk to Eldridge, but posted a zero. Mu\u00f1oz, by contrast, pitched maybe one of the most dominant innings he has all season, striking out Heliot Ramos on three pitches (heater-slider-slider), getting Jung Hoo Lee to ground out on a slider, and then striking out Willy Adames on three pitches – two heaters at 100 followed by another wicked slider. Mu\u00f1oz has looked much, much sharper of late, but the effort from the bullpen today was superb, something Dan Wilson says is partly due to the willingness to attack that having a multi-run lead offers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt helps guys to get into the ballgame and have confidence that we\u2019re going to take home a victory\u2026anytime you can give them an extra run, an extra two runs, it makes all the difference in the world, because then they\u2019re able to attack. In a one-run or a tie game, these guys are nails. But you give them a little extra lead, they\u2019re going to make you pay.\u201d<\/p>\n
I might not be convinced these Mariners have turned a corner, but I\u2019m not the one who needs to be convinced. Postgame, Logan Gilbert expressed confidence in not only the team\u2019s recent record, but also how they\u2019ve gotten there.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know where we\u2019re at. It hasn\u2019t been exactly what we wanted up to this point, but Dan keeps talking about how everything\u2019s right in front of us. Division\u2019s wide open. Won three of the last four, so that\u2019s huge, and the way we\u2019ve done it too, any time in the past I feel like we\u2019ve gone through it a little bit – it\u2019s kind of like a walkoff win is huge, with the momentum, so we got that walkoff hit, we came from behind today, clawed back, the offense did great, so those are two really scrappy wins. I think that\u2019s what kind of gets us going.\u201d<\/p>\n
Luke Raley echoed Gilbert\u2019s sentiments.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know the talent that\u2019s in the clubhouse. It\u2019s pretty clear we haven\u2019t put it all together, but we know it\u2019s there, and we know how we can play. We\u2019ve seen flashes of it, but the consistency hasn\u2019t been there. But we all believe that it\u2019ll show up. We\u2019re going through it a little bit right now. But the way to look at it is, we\u2019ve won three out of our last four, and hopefully we can start getting some momentum and run with it\u2026It\u2019s kind of a cliche answer, but I feel we\u2019ve had some good at-bats where we\u2019ve hit balls hard and they\u2019re outs and we just haven\u2019t come up with the big hit. And Cole [Young] had the big swing yesterday, and it can be as easy as one swing. Just change the momentum, change the confidence, the the team starts rolling. That\u2019s all it takes in baseball. And I hope that was the swing, and I hope we can roll from there, but if it isn\u2019t, we\u2019re going to keep working to get to that point.\u201d<\/p>\n
It can be as easy as one swing. It can also be as difficult. But it\u2019s a lot easier when everyone knows their niche, and after today, where the Mariners stacked 11 hits up and down the lineup and scored on balls both small and long while striking out seven times against three walks, it feels like maybe – maybe – they\u2019re starting to find it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Mariners have played 100 games. 50 of those games have been wins. 50 of those games have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":756390,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2392],"tags":[5,620,4,619,65,38487,77416,3235],"class_list":["post-756389","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-game-recaps","tag-seattle-mariners-scores-standings","tag-seattlemariners"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116949898187268323","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756389","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=756389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/756390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=756389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=756389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=756389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}