SEATTLE — He lost a season, albeit a shortened one of just 60 games, to a foot injury. An abysmal slump to start this season where nothing seemed to feel right at the plate and the results reflected the discomfort, costing him playing time and the starting role at catcher.
But in the final months of what has been a frustrating season, Tom Murphy has returned to being the primary catcher in the Mariners push for their first postseason appearance since 2001.
Murphy belted a pair of home runs off Arizona starter Madison Bumgarner and the Mariners held on for an expected but not easy 5-4 victory over the Diamondbacks.
In their 141st game of the season, this Mariners’ team that has continued to defy expectations and thwart off the predicted slide to mediocrity, moved to one game back of the second wild card spot once again with a 77-64 record.
All three teams from the American League East lost on Friday night while the two American League West teams — the Mariners and A’s picked up wins.
After winning their last eight consecutive games, including series sweeps over the A’s and Yankees, who they are competing with for a wild card spot, the Blue Jays tossed out a clunker at Camden Yards, losing 6-3 to the worst team in baseball — the Baltimore Orioles.
Toronto dropped to 77-63.
The Red Sox (80-63) got down 4-0 early and tried to rally against the White Sox bullpen but fell short at Guaranteed Rate Field, losing 4-3.
And the Yankees continued to fade, losing their seventh straight game in a 10-3 drubbing by the Mets at Citi Field. Since winning 13 games in a row in August, the Yanks have lost 11 of their 13 games to fall to 78-63.
Seattle got usable start from Marco Gonzales, who pitched six innings allowing three runs — all of them unearned — on four hits with a walk and three strikeouts.
Wait, all of his runs were unearned?
Well, by rule they were all unearned, but one of them should’ve been earned since he was responsible for the error that made it unearned.
After Gonzales worked a scoreless first inning, the Mariners grabbed an immediate lead in the bottom of the first. J.P. Crawford hammered a 3-2 cutter from Bumgarner into the right field seats for a leadoff homer. It was his third time starting a game with a homer this season and his eighth total homer on the season, which is a career high.
The Mariners immediately gave back the run and more in the second inning. With two outs, Josh Rojas hit a groundball to second baseman Abraham Toro, who fielded it and fired to first baseman Ty France. But the semi-routine play wasn’t converted. France dropped the ball and Rojas was safe at first base.
That would loom large when Henry Ramos launched his first career MLB homer into the left field seats. The last homer that Ramos hit was a week ago in Reno. And he never actually finished rounding the bases. While playing the Mariners’ Triple-A affiliate, the Tacoma Rainiers, Ramos had some words for the Tacoma dugout while slowly rounding the bases. It resulted in a confrontation with shortstop Donovan Walton with an ensuing bench-clearing fight. Ramos was ejected from the game and will serve a seven-game suspension with Reno if he ever returns to play for the Aces.
Because of the France error, the two runs from the homer were considered unearned.
Seattle retook the lead in the bottom of the frame. Luis Torrens double to right-center with one out and Murphy was gifted an 0-2 changeup down the middle that he yanked into the upper level of Edgar’s Cantina for his 10th homer of the season.
The lead would be brief as the Dbacks would immediately tie the game in the third inning. After walking Ketel Marte with one out, Gonzales tried to use his effective sidearm quick throw to first base to keep Marte close to the bag. The throw was wayward and bounced into foul territory, allowing Marte to advance to third base. He scored moments later on Carson Kelly’s sac fly to center field to tie the game at 3-3.
France got one of the runs he was responsible for back in the sixth, hammering a hard one-hopper past second baseman Andrew Young for a two-out single.
Murphy’s second homer — a solo blast into the Mariners’ bullpen in the sixth — proved to be a needed insurance run when Diego Castillo served up a solo homer to rookie Seth Beer, who was making his MLB debut as a pinch hitter in the eighth inning.
