SEATTLE _ Domingo Santana did not move. Not even a courtesy trot. He didn't turn his head and marvel at the baseball Matt Olson deposited deep into the right field seats at T-Mobile Park. He remained perfectly still, a living statue, as if ignoring the three-run homer would make it magically disappear.
It did not. Mariners opener Matt Carasiti surrendered five runs (four earned), four hits, a walk, a wild pitch and the aforementioned home run while registering a single out in the first inning of the Oakland Athletics' 7-4 victory on Sunday.
After Carasiti was mercifully removed from the game with runners on first and third, Wade LeBlanc's first pitch to third baseman Chad Pinder was laced to left field for a clean single. Outfielder Dylan Moore _ in true 2019 Mariners fashion _ allowed the ball to trickle through his legs and run to the wall, scoring two more A's.
By the time the top of the first inning ended _ after nine batters, five hits, two pitchers, one error and 34 total pitches _ five runs had been scored.
In retrospect, it's hard to blame Santana for not wanting to watch.
And things got worse before they got better. Oakland shortstop Marcus Semien led off the second inning with a solo homer to left field.
But that's when Mariners catcher Omar Narvaez got going. The 27-year-old Seattle backstop produced a hit and an RBI in each of his first four at-bats on Sunday. He launched solo homers in the second and eighth innings and added RBI singles in the fourth and sixth. It was the first multi-homer game of Narvaez's career.
And it was wasted. The same goes for LeBlanc, who entered the game with a 3-0 record and a 3.31 ERA in six relief appearances behind a Mariners opener this season. (Consider, by comparison, that LeBlanc is 2-2 with a 6.99 ERA in six starts.) The 34-year-old veteran lefty surrendered just three hits and one earned run in 6.2 innings on Sunday. In his last 18 innings, LeBlanc has allowed a grand total of 12 hits and three earned runs.
But when LeBlanc left, Oakland pounced. Center fielder Ramon Laureano took a hanging 85 mph slider from Mariners reliever Matt Wisler and wrapped a solo homer around the foul pole in left field to extend the lead to 7-3 in the eighth inning.
For the middling Mariners, Narvaez's offense wasn't enough. After he struck out swinging for the third time in the bottom of the eighth inning, designated hitter Daniel Vogelbach turned, spit out his gum and angrily walloped it with his bat.
It was the best contact he made all day.
