Up until last night, when Logan Gilbert was removed in the third inning of the game with scary-sounding elbow soreness, the last truly disastrous game at T-Mobile Park was the shellacking at the hands of the Tigers where Emerson Hancock gave up six runs in the first inning.
Tonight, with the final day of the NFL Draft drawing attention away, the Mariners got to be on the other side of that six-run first inning, although without the pitching staff allowing the opposing team to climb back into it, as the Tigers did the Mariners. Luis Castillo throttled down the Marlins over six innings, and the bullpen (as it did not in the other most disastrous game at T-Mobile Park yet this season, a sour 7-0 loss to the A’s also started by Castillo) held the line down the stretch.
The Mariners got out to a quick start against Marlins starter Connor Gillispie. Julio Rodríguez jumped on the first pitch he saw from Gillispie, a 92 mph four-seamer that didn’t get as far in as pitchers have been targeting Julio with this season, for a no-doubter: 112.5 mph off the bat, 417 feet.
Jorge Polanco followed that up with a more modest solo shot of his own, a mere 355-footer that still climbed over the garden wall for a run.
After that, the Mariners switched the settings controller to “small ball.” Cal Raleigh ground out a ten-pitch at-bat and then, with one out, Luke Raley reached on a bunt. Rowdy Tellez worked a walk of his own to load the bases, laying off a full-count sweeper off the plate, and then Ben Williamson quickly unloaded them. Kevin Seitzer spent some time pregame glowingly praising Williamson’s approach, and it’s not hard to see why.
Miles Mastrobuoni followed with the mirror-image of Williamson’s double, this time going down the right-field line, scoring two more and breaking the game wide open.
But wait, there’s more. The Mariners added another run in the second on a Cal Raleigh double that should have scored Jorge Polanco, who had walked, except that a fan interfered with the ball (boo fan! bad fan!); the run did eventually come in on a sac fly from Luke Raley, who quietly had one of the best lines of the night, with three hits, three runs scored, an RBI and a walk with no strikeouts.
The Mariners added another run off reliever George Soriano, who had put down the bottom of the lineup without incident in the third but was not so lucky in the fourth, as Polanco tagged Soriano, a reliever I’ve definitely heard of before, for his second homer of the game:
RIP to the previous title of this recap, “On a 6-0 Night You Can See Forever.” Soriano went on to struggle through the Oops All Rs part of the lineup, issuing back-to-back walks to Raleigh and Randy (including another pitch-count-chewing 10-pitch walk to Cal), giving up a line drive single to Raley, and then hitting Rowdy with a pitch to force in another run (Tellez was lifted later in the game; postgame he said his knuckles are sore, but he’s fine). A fielder’s choice off the bat of Williamson brought the scoring to a nice round number, making it 10-0 Mariners. RIP to the previous title of this recap, “Mariners Score a Perfect 10 in Defeat of Marlins.”
But the Mariners were not done scoring. Raley and pinch-hitter Donovan Solano checked in with back-to-back two-out base hits in the sixth, and then Williamson drove home another run off reliever Tyler Phillips, once again taking a pitch on the inside edge of the plate and driving it to left field: a ground ball that found a hole rather than a line drive, but still scalded, at 103.4 off the bat. RIP to the previous title of this recap, “Mariners honor Edgar Martínez by scoring 11 runs.”
Meanwhile, Luis Castillo—remember him?—kept the Marlins off the board all game and mostly out of the hit column, only giving up one hit in the third, a leadoff single to Dane Myers on a pretty good 1-2 pitch off the plate and away. Castillo did struggle a little with his command while settling in, walking two hitters in the first inning and needing 24 pitches to get through the first. Castillo was also the beneficiary of several Gold (or at least Silver or Bronze) Glove-level plays in the field, most perfectly encapsulated in a 1-2-3 fourth inning where Julio made a spectacular running catch in the outfield on a 109 mph lineout off the bat of Kyle Stowers with an .880 xBA, immediately followed up by this 6-4-3 putout that showed why J.P. Crawford’s glove has that little gold patch on it:
Credit too there to Mastrobuoni, who doesn’t often get the start at second base and partner with J.P. on these kinds of plays, for reacting to Crawford’s instincts and then completing the play with a fine throw of his own; Mastrobuoni also had an excellent sliding play earlier in the game. (The final out of the inning was on a groundout to third that was a routine play but Ben Williamson’s surehandedness at third is not something Mariners fans, still scarred by the start of the season, take for granted.)
Despite holding the Marlins to just the one hit over six innings, Castillo’s pitch count wasn’t in great shape at the end of the sixth, meaning it was time for some of the lower-leverage bullpen arms to get some work in. Troy Taylor, recently recalled from Tacoma after having a rocky time in his first inning back from the IL, had about as soft a landing as any pitcher could; he worked around a leadoff single in the seventh and got some help from his defense (a dugout rail catch and an inning-ending double play) to post a scoreless inning. Casey Legumina and Tayler Saucedo also worked around singles in the eighth and ninth innings; Legumina had to face the most traffic of any Mariners pitcher in the game thanks to a Mastrobuoni error that put two on with two outs, but got Ronny Simon to fly out harmlessly to end the threat.
The Mariners added their other three runs in garbage time against position player Javier Sanoja; Mitch Garver almost looked embarrassed to collect his first home run of the season, a two-run shot, off Sanoja in the seventh, but they all count the same in the box score. Baseball takes and takes from players; it is okay to get a little gift once in a while, Mitch. And after seeing the Mariners come out on the wrong side of these kinds of blowouts a few times at home already this season, including last night’s nightmarish affair, players and fans alike will happily take the gift of an easy win where the team across the street from T-Mobile might be jealous of the final score.
