HOUSTON — As hitter after hitter found some way to reach base, and the runs began to pile up from their first of the game to three runs to eventually nine runs in a fourth inning that wouldn’t end, the grumbling from 34,737 fans at Minute Maid Park grew louder and louder.
They weren’t used to seeing their team on the receiving end of one of those interminable innings.
They’ve been so accustomed to seeing the Astros hand out those beatdown innings to opponents, specifically the Mariners over the past few seasons.
In a place where they’ve lost so many games over the past four seasons in so many different ways, from blowouts to walk-offs, where everything that could go wrong usually did, the Mariners used that nine-run inning to cruise to an easy 10-1 victory, giving them wins in the first two games of the four-game series.
The last time the Mariners won games on back-to-back days at Minute Maid Park came in a four-game sweep of Houston on Aug. 9-12, 2018. The starting pitchers in that series were James Paxton, Mike Leake, Wade LeBlanc and Erasmo Ramirez.
But when the Mariners started the step-back rebuild, a trip to Houston meant defeat. They went 0-10 in 2019, and it only got marginally better in the seasons that followed.
Coming into this season, the Mariners were 7-32 at Minute Maid since that 2019 season, including the two crushing playoff losses.
Well, they are now 2-0 in Houston with the win.
It doesn’t mean they’ve ended their woes, but it’s certainly a start in the right direction.
The Mariners gave no indication of such an offensive explosion in the first three innings. Facing Astros starter Hunter Brown for the first time since he tossed three scoreless frames in the frustrating 18-inning loss that ended their season, the Mariners struck out eight times in the first three innings, squandering base runners in each of the frames.
The Mariners did make Brown throw more than 20 pitches in each of those innings. When he started the fourth, he was at 66 pitches. It was an inning he wouldn’t finish or even record an out.
Brown gave up a leadoff single to Jarred Kelenic and walked Mike Ford to start his problems. After his error in the bottom of the third inning led to a run for the Astros, Kolten Wong got a run back with a crisp single to left to score Kelenic. J.P. Crawford followed with a single to right to load the bases for Julio Rodriguez.
After a vicious swing and miss on a piped fastball from Brown, Rodriguez took a more controlled swing on the next pitch, punching a fastball through the right side to score a pair of runs.
Astros manager Dusty Baker called on breaking-ball specialist Phil Maton to replace Brown and try to get an out of any sort. Maton struck out Ty France, but walked Teoscar Hernandez to reload the bases. Cal Raleigh beat out a possible inning-ending double play to allow another run to score and make it 4-1.
The Mariners kept the pressure on Maton with the type of plate appearances that manager Scott Servais adores. Eugenio Suarez took a misplaced breaking ball off the leg to load the bases again. In his second plate appearance of the inning, Kelenic refused to chase a 3-2 curveball out of the zone, instead taking the run-scoring walk. Mike Ford turned the game into a rout with swing of the bat, sending a line drive over the head of Kyle Tucker in right field for a bases-clearing double. The inning finally ended when Wong was thrown out trying to turn his RBI double into a triple.
Brown and Maton combined to throw 55 pitches in the fourth inning with France, who had two this in his first two plate appearances, as the only hitter in the lineup to not reach base in that inning.
That was more than enough for Seattle starter Luis Castillo, who pitched seven innings, giving up just the one unearned run on five hits with no walks and three strikeouts to improve to 6-6 on the season and drop his ERA under three to 2.85.
After losing four straight games that Castillo had started, the Mariners have picked up wins in each of his last two outings.
The big lead allowed for a stress-free night for the Mariners bullpen and for rookie Isaiah Campbell to make his MLB debut in front of his fiancée and family.
Called up from Double-A Arkansas on Thursday, Campbell tossed a scoreless eighth inning and picked up his first career strikeout, blowing a 96-mph fastball by Jake Meyers.
Ford hit his eighth homer of the season, launching a solo homer off position player Bligh Madris in the ninth to make it 10-1
