Even for a team that struggled with strikeouts mightily last year, looking at the box score of today’s game, with a swoonable eighteen strikeouts for the Mariners, might spur fans to find their fainting couches. Yet somehow the Mariners, despite having a strikeout total old enough to vote, defeated the Blue Jays, earning their fourth straight series win. Defense might win championships, but homers win baseball games, and the Mariners had a trio of those today, powering them to an 8-3 win despite the Blue Jays once again having near-constant traffic on the bases.
Dylan Moore, Certified Lefty Killer, started off the homer party against Blue Jays starter Easton Lucas and got the Mariners on the board three pitches in:
Julio Rodríguez followed that up by jumping on the first pitch he saw for a double, cueing up Cal Raleigh to do what Cal Raleigh does against the Blue Jays:
Lucas was able to strike out the side, but not before the Mariners had put in some heavy work on his pitch count. They continued the damage in the second inning, thanks to some more productive at-bats from the bottom of the lineup as Ben Williamson worked a leadoff walk and Leo Rivas hit a single. Julio walked to load the bases and then with two outs, Randy Arozarena once again came up with a clutch hit, poking a first-pitch changeup into the outfield to make it 5-0. Mitch Garver followed that up with a single to make it 6-0 and end Lucas’s day.
However, that’s where the scoring dried up for the Mariners for a while. Paxton Schultz, making his big-league debut, quelled the threat by striking out Donovan Solano and stifled the Mariners over the next four innings. Lucas had already struck out five; Schultz added to that total, racking up an impressive eight strikeouts, setting a record for a Blue Jays reliever in his first time toeing a major-league mound. Schultz recorded 17 whiffs, tied for the most in baseball today with Jesús Luzardo and Sonny Gray.
Meanwhile, it was a struggle of a start for Luis Castillo, who dealt with traffic all day, needing 102 pitches to fight through five innings. Castillo was able to navigate around traffic in the first, but couldn’t get out of the second inning cleanly, giving up a leadoff double to Addison Barger followed by a single to Will Wagner and a run-scoring infield hit to the catcher Tyler Heineman, as the bottom of Toronto’s lineup did some work against the Mariners starter. Bo Bichette followed up with a single to put another run on the board for the Jays, followed by a single from Vlad Guerrero Jr., as the Blue Jays just kept heaping the pressure on Castillo. There was a real danger of the early advantage the Mariners had built disappearing entirely, but Randy—and his flair for the dramatic—thankfully kept the damage limited at just the two runs:
The Jays would get one more off Castillo in the third. George Springer tagged Castillo for a hard-hit double leading off the inning, and then Castillo made his own life tougher than it needed to be, walking Barger on four pitches. Dylan Moore then made Castillo’s life tougher than it needed to be, fielding a ground ball and failing to throw to second for the force, double clutching and not even getting the out at first against the slow-footed catcher Heineman. A sacrifice fly from nine-hole hitter Nathan Lukes put another run on the board for the Jays, but Bichette grounded out to end the threat.
Blue Jays fans will be frustrated today by all the missed opportunities—5-for-21 with RISP, but 12 men left on base—but credit Castillo for consistently navigating into and then out of trouble. He worked around another leadoff double in the fourth (with credit to a nice play at first by Solano for the final out of the inning), and worked around another two-out double in his final inning of work, fighting to get through five innings and earn a win.
Collin Snider took over in the sixth and carved through the top of the Blue Jays lineup, needing just five pitches to retire Bitchette, Guerrero Jr., and Santander on weak-contact popups and a groundout. The Blue Jays countered by finally replacing Schultz with another recently recalled pitcher, Dillon Tate, who was greeted very rudely by Rowdy:
That two-run shot gave the Mariners some breathing room late in the game, and Gabe Speier did his job to spin a shutdown inning in the bottom half, despite hitting the first batter he saw and then walking George Springer on some not-particularly-competitive pitches. Speier buttoned it up after that with a three-pitch strikeout of pinch-hitter Myles Straw, a groundout, and then another strikeout of the catcher Heineman. Trent Thornton worked around a Bermuda Triangle single for a scoreless eighth, and Casey Legumina posted the only other 1-2-3 inning of the day in the ninth, with three weak-contact outs in the air.
There is a lot to not like about this win, truthfully speaking, from the Oops! All Homers offense to the eighteen strikeouts to another starter going short to near-constant traffic on the bases. But after a start to the season that looked like it would be a continuation of last season’s sleepy offense, it’s refreshing to see the bats be able to pick up the starters, vs. the other way around. And today’s whiff-fest not withstanding, the team has been walking more and striking out significantly less than last year’s club, with the attendant uptick in offense. This is a punishingly long road trip, covering two countries, three cities, and two time zones, ending in the house of horrors (for the Mariners) that is Fenway Park. The Mariners started setting themselves up well for this trip back in Seattle, taking two series from their AL West opponents, and managed to snatch series wins in the first two series of this trip, lessening the pressure to win a series in Boston, a place that’s traditionally tough for the Mariners pitching staff. It’s hard to quibble with any of that.
