One pitch was all the Mariners needed to recharge some positive vibes into the ballpark Saturday night.
Julio Rodriguez hammered the first pitch thrown in the bottom of the first inning off the left-field foul pole for a loud home run and Jorge Polanco went back-to-back two pitches later to power the Mariners to a six-run first inning en route to a 14-0 dismantling of the Miami Marlins before a crowd of 35,362 at T-Mobile Park.
On the day their ace, Logan Gilbert, landed on the injured list with an elbow flexor strain — the latest in a string of notable injuries for the M’s in the first month — the Mariners offense provided an immediate lift against Miami starter Connor Gillispie.
Rodriguez and Polanco became the third pair of Mariners to lead off a game with back-to-back homers — Ichiro was involved in the other two — and Polanco added another solo blast in the fourth inning to continue his torrid start to the season.
“I feel like our mentality as a team was, we’ve got to win today,” Rodriguez said. “What happened, it’s unfortunate, and we’re going to miss him, for sure. Nobody can replace Logan. But as a team, you know, that was in the past for us, and we showed up today ready to compete.”
Rookie third baseman Ben Williamson drove in four runs to continue the blazing start to his big-league career, and the Mariners (15-12) scored a season-high 14 runs on 15 hits.
The M’s will try to win their sixth straight series Sunday when right-hander Logan Evans, their top pitching prospect, makes his major-league debut opposite Max Meyer, the Marlins’ emerging young ace.
The 23-year-old Evans, the Mariners’ 12th-round pick in 2023, takes over the spot in the rotation from Gilbert, who will be shut down from throwing for two weeks and then reevaluated. He’s likely to be out until at least June.
With starter George Kirby (shoulder inflammation) still on the injured list as well — and with long-term injuries to right fielder Victor Robles and second baseman Ryan Bliss — the Mariners will need more from an offense that has shown signs of a steady resurgence over the past few weeks.
Since they were swept by the Giants in San Francisco on April 6, the Mariners have gone 12-5 and they are averaging 5.8 runs per game in those 17 games, second-most in the majors.
“We lost a couple of heartbreakers in San Francisco,” M’s manager Dan Wilson said. “But these guys just continue to pick up and do the things that they do. I think offensively, we’re really starting to see a lot of the fruits of that. When you can score runs consistently, when you can get runners on base consistently, that’s when good things happen, and you start to put together some W’s.”
This was about as good as it gets for any offense.
Rodriguez’s leadoff homer was his fourth of the season — and seventh of his career — and it was a rocket at 112.5 mph off his bat, with a projected distance of 417 feet.
Polanco raised his batting average to .354 and his OPS to 1.085 with his two-homer night, and his dramatic about-face from an injury-riddled season last year is the Mariners’ best story of the early season.
“That’s the player that he is when he’s healthy,” Rodriguez said. “He’s one of the best players in the game, and that’s no secret for anybody. …
“The way that he just showed up every day (last year) going through things with his knee and all the different things, he showed me a lot. I respect him so much.”
Cal Raleigh followed the back-to-back homers from Rodriguez and Polanco with a 10-pitch walk in the first; Luke Raley dropped down a bunt single; Rowdy Tellez walked, and then Williamson and Miles Mastrobuoni hit back-to-back two-run doubles off Gillispie to make it 6-0.
“With the players that we have on the roster, we’re so dynamic in so many different ways,” Rodriguez said. “… We can all do everything. It’s a really fun lineup that we have and we really pick each other up.”
The bottom of the M’s lineup has provided consistent production of late.
“It feels like we’re getting contributions up and down the lineup, and tonight was another display of that,” Wilson said. “That’s so important in terms of confidence and building a deep lineup, and these guys are taking the opportunities and making the most of them, for sure.”
This game had a little bit of everything for the Mariners.
Every Mariners batter reached base at least once. Luke Raley had three hits and a sac fly RBI, and Mitch Garver had his first homer of the season (off a Miami position player, Javier Sanoja) in the seventh inning to extend the lead to 13-0.
“These guys kept pouring it on,” Wilson said.
Luis Castillo, in his best start of the season, threw six shutout innings, allowing only one hit (a single), with two walks and five strikeouts. The Marlins put only one runner in scoring position and never got a runner past second base.
There were also some stellar defensive plays. Rodriguez ran down several fly balls on the warning track. And the real gem came from shortstop J.P. Crawford, who made a diving stop up the middle and then used his glove to flip the ball to his second baseman, Mastrobuoni, who fired to first for a spectacular 6-4-3 putout.
There was Randy Arozarena, with the M’s up 13-0, getting thrown out at second trying to stretch a single into a double he’d hit off a position player — and then immediately (and hilariously) motioning to the dugout for Wilson to challenge the out call. Turns out, Wilson’s attempt to challenge the play came too late (and replays did appear to show Arozarena was indeed safe on his creative slide at second base. So it goes.)
There was also an injury scare when Tellez was hit in the hand by a 94-mph fastball from Miami reliever Anthony Veneziano with the bases loaded in the fourth inning.
Tellez eventually came out of the game. He said X-rays taken of his hand were negative.
