ARLINGTON, Texas _ When it's right, the Seattle Mariners offense can be similar to the massive deluge that delayed Saturday night's game at Globe Life Park _ you know it's coming, you know it could be overwhelming and there isn't much you can do but wait until it works itself out.
On a night when they got a suboptimal outing from their best starting pitcher and didn't look particularly crisp in the field behind him or the rest of their pitchers, the Mariners turned to their offense and just bashed their way to victory.
Seattle scored five runs in the seventh inning, turning a two-run deficit into a three-run lead and pulling away for a 9-7 victory over the Texas Rangers.
The Mariners (11-8) are 9-1 in games when they score more than four runs.
After four games of misery in their previous series against the Houston Astros, the Mariners hitters have feasted on the Texas bullpen during the first two games of this series, scoring 10 runs.
Down 6-4, Seattle started the seventh with five straight hits. The Mariners scored four runs off light-tossing lefty Alex Claudio to take the lead. Guillermo Heredia led off with a pinch-hit, infield single, Dee Gordon followed with a looping double to third and Jean Segura plated both runners with a double into the left-field corner to tie the game. Robinson Cano gave Seattle the lead for good, ambushing the first pitch he saw from Claudio. He lifted a towering fly ball that carried over the wall for a two-run homer and an 8-6 lead, knocking Claudio from the game. Later in the inning, Mitch Haniger continued his torment of the Rangers, blasting a solo homer in back-to-back games. He now has a team-high six homers this season.
Even with the late offense, it wasn't simple for the Mariners to close it out. They had to extend Edwin Diaz to a four-out save to secure the win. Diaz's eighth save was an adventure in the ninth. He should have been out of the inning early but Cano booted a game-ending double-play ball, which also allowed a run to score. So instead, Diaz found himself with the bases loaded and two outs. He got a fly ball to end the drama.
The pitching duel between Big Maple and Big Sexy never really materialized. Although the ageless Bartolo Colon, all of 44 years young, did outperform his younger counterpart. Although that wasn't hard to do considering how much James Paxton struggled.
Paxton was fighting an inconsistent strike zone from home-plate umpire Gary Cederstrom, his own meandering command with his pitches, a pesky group of Rangers hitters that rarely made at-bats simple and not much help from a defense that went from stellar Friday to stumbling Saturday.
It took him 32 pitches to get out of the first inning while allowing a run. That isn't ideal in keeping a pitch count under control. It didn't get much better. A 19-pitch second inning when he struck out the side was followed by a 33-pitch marathon of a third inning when the Rangers tacked on three more runs for a 4-1 lead. Paxton pitched just four innings, giving up five runs on six hits with three walks and six strikeouts. It was a forgettable outing.
The Mariners eventually solved the riddle of Colon's moving fastball. In the fourth inning, after appearing to hit a two-run homer over the foul pole, only to have third-base umpire Eric Cooper call it foul and a replay in New York uphold the call, Nelson Cruz crushed a two-run homer into the second deck on the very next pitch from Colon. It measured 453 feet per MLB Statcast.
Seattle eventually forced Colon out of the game in the sixth inning. A sac fly from Haniger tied the game at 4-4.
