ARLINGTON, Texas — There would be no walk-off celebrations for Jonah Heim this time.
After hitting walk-off homers in back-to-back games when the Mariners last visited the comfortably climate-controlled monstrosity that is Globe Life Field, Heim stepped to the plate as the tying run with two outs and a runner on first base in the bottom of the ninth.
But unlike those past outings, Heim was facing Paul Sewald — the Mariners’ best reliever.
Sewald avoided throwing a pitch low and inside and got Heim to fly out to center to close out a 3-1 win over the Rangers.
With the win, Seattle improved to 64-56.
Tyler Anderson delivered his longest outing since joining the Mariners, pitching six innings, allowing one run on three hits with no walks and four strikeouts to pick up his first win with the team.
His one run allowed came in the third inning. After his teammates had given him a 1-0 lead in the top of the inning on a sacrifice fly from Ty France that scored Cal Raleigh, Anderson immediately served up a solo homer to Andy Ibanez, who was leading off the bottom of the third.
After getting up 1-2, Anderson tossed a changeup that didn’t quite have the expected sink or fade-away from the right-handed hitting Ibanez. He hammered it into the left-field seats for his fifth homer of the season.
But the Mariners gave Anderson another one-run lead in the fifth inning when Raleigh singled, advanced to third on J.P. Crawford’s double to right field and scored on Mitch Haniger’s deep fly ball to center to make it 2-1.
Given the lead again, Anderson made it hold up. He retired 12 straight batters after the Ibanez homer and left after six innings.
Aided by a few outstanding defensive plays, the Mariners’ bullpen, fresh off a day off, didn’t allow a run over the final three innings.
Jarred Kelenic made a nice sliding grab on a sinking liner in center off the bat of Nathaniel Lowe to help Drew Steckenrider work a scoreless seventh.
In the eighth inning, Diego Castillo pitched himself into a spot of trouble, allowing a one-out single to Ibanez and then hitting Yonny Castillo with a pitch to put the tying run and the go-ahead run on base.
But J.P. Crawford cleaned up the mess, starting an inning-ending 6-4-3 double play with a fast and crisp lead throw to Abraham Toro despite being off balance when fielding Isiah Kiner-Falefa’s ground ball deep in the hole.
Toro received the perfectly delivered throw and showed off his corner-infielder arm, firing to first base with authority to get Kiner-Falefa and complete the double play. It was Seattle’s 105th double play of the season, near the top of the AL and MLB.
Seattle got a big insurance run in the ninth inning when Luis Torrens hit a solo homer into the Rangers’ bullpen. For a moment, it looked like Rangers center fielder D.J. Peters had made one of the best catches of the season.
He made a leaping attempt at the ball, stretching out his 6-foot-6 frame and had the ball in his glove. But when his armpit hit the padded top of the wall, the collision knocked the ball out of his glove. It gave Torrens his 14th homer of the season.
