If, or perhaps when — depending on your current mood and outlook — the Mariners fall out of this unexpected quest for the postseason, these late-inning failures and regrettable losses to what’s left of the Texas Rangers will be highlighted as one of the fatal blows in their eventual demise to a now familiar fate of watching the postseason in October.
Facing a team that they had dominated in all of 2020 and early in this season, which had lost its best hitter to the Yankees and its best starting pitcher to the Phillies, the Mariners needed to use this three-game series to open this homestand to recover from a difficult series in New York.
Even if Seattle didn’t gain ground in the race for the second wild card, at least not falling back further was key.
Instead, the Mariners found multiple ways to turn a victory into an awful 5-4 defeat in 10 innings, suffering one of their worst losses since, well, Jonah Heim hit walk-off homers in back-to-back games on the previous road trip.
How did it go so wrong?
It started with their inability to score more than two runs over the first eight innings of baseball.
In the ninth inning with the game tied at 2-2, closer Paul Sewald, who had been largely unhittable of late, gave up a solo homer to Adolis Garcia on his first pitch thrown. The first-pitch slider moved right into the middle of the plate and was crushed into the Mariners’ bullpen.
The Rangers tried to gift Seattle the win in the ninth inning when veteran reliever Spencer Patton simply couldn’t throw a strike.
He walked Jake Bauers and Jarred Kelenic to start the inning. He would’ve walked pinch hitter Cal Raleigh, but the big catcher dumped a single into right field to load the bases. Jake Fraley, the Norse God of Walks, of course, worked a walk with the bases loaded to tie the game at 3-3.
But the Mariners, who came into the game with a .300/.356/.563 slash line with bases loaded couldn’t push across the winning run with the top of their order coming up. J.P. Crawford and Mitch Haniger both struck out swinging and Kyle Seager flew out to center to end the inning.
The Rangers scored two runs off Erik Swanson in the 10th inning on a pair of singles.
Seattle answered with a run in the bottom of the inning but couldn’t come up with another run.
The Mariners got a quality start from ever-improving rookie Logan Gilbert, who was facing the Rangers for the third time this season and the second time in three starts.
Gilbert pitched six innings, allowing two runs on five hits with no walks and five strikeouts. While manager Scott Servais discussed Gilbert’s offspeed pitches and their improvement extensively during his pregame meeting, not many were thrown in the game.
Working with veteran catcher Tom Murphy, Gilbert relied heavily on the fastball, throwing it 72 times with just 19 sliders, four change-ups and two curveballs.
With two outs in the second inning, Jason Martin ambushed a 94 mph fastball that was left in the middle of the plate, sending a rocket off the windows of the Hit It Here Café for a 1-0 Rangers lead.
Seattle answered with two runs in the fourth inning against Rangers starter Kolby Allard to give Gilbert the lead.
After sending a deep drive to center field only to see it caught near the top of the wall by Adolis Garcia, Mitch Haniger made sure that only Ranger that had a chance of catching the flyball in his next at-bat was in the visiting bullpen.
Haniger pulled a hanging curveball from Allard into the visitor’s bullpen though none of the Rangers relievers seemed interested in catching his solo blast that tied the game at 1-1.
It was Haniger’s 26th homer of the season, tying his career-high set in 2018 when he was an All-Star.
Kyle Seager kept pace in the battle for team home run leader, making it back-to-back homers with a solo blast of his own into right field. It was Seager’s 25th homer this season. His career high is 30 homers, which he hit in 2016.
But Gilbert and the Mariners couldn’t keep the one-run lead for long. Their nemesis that is Jonah Heim led off with a single to start the fifth inning.
With one out, D.J. Peters hit a double into right-center and third base coach Tony Beasley made the aggressive decision to try to score Heim from first base. Second baseman Abraham Toro delivered a strong relay throw from just off the infield dirt in right field. Catcher Tom Murphy caught the one-hopper and wheeled around to tag Heim, who had an awkward slide on his knees. But when Murphy tagged Heim in the midsection, the impact knocked the ball out of his glove. The sure out was now the tying run.
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