The Mariners brought a dumper to a duel.
George Kirby outpitched Aaron Nola on Tuesday in the Mariners electric 4-1 win over the Phillies. Kirby struck out nine over 7 2/3 innings and turned in his best outing of the year. Cal Raleigh smacked another homer, giving him four on the series. And the rest of the lineup scratched and clawed a few more runs late to give the Mariners an impressive, all around, and fun win. That’s back-to-back series victories over the top two Wild Card teams in the National League.
It’s been a weird season for Kirby, something I feel I’ve written a dozen times in the last five months. He’s walked a lot of batters (relative to himself) and struck out very few (relative to everyone). He survived the early part of the season by keeping the ball on the ground, but that’s no longer the case and he’s since been getting crushed. He’s often seemed to nibble at the edges of the zone, unable to get chase out of it, and unable to get whiffs in it. He gave up 11 runs in his last two starts, making early exits in both.
But Kirby on Tuesday looked like the near-ace level pitcher of the past. He attacked the zone relentlessly with his four-seamer, ripping upper-90s fastballs with his best velocity of the season (97.9 mph). When he did expand the zone with the slow and bendy stuff, he got chase 49% of the time. Kirby generated 21 whiffs on Tuesday — the second most in a game for his career. He was aggressive, sharp, and borderline unhittable.
It was obvious right from the jump that something was special for Kirby. He led off the game throwing three pretty much middle-middle fastballs to Kyle Schwarber, each greater than 98 mph, and Schwarber swung through them all. “I knew I had it today,” Kirby said of the four-seamer after the game. He then got ahead of Trea Turner with a few more fastballs registering 99 mph, before finishing him off with devastating sweeper away.
One of my favorite Kirby’s nine strikeouts came in the third. He painted a fastball low and away to Bryson Stott for a called strike, then threw a sweeper that made Stott swing at his shoes. Kirby ramped up and blew 99 mph past him on a pitch way up and out of the zone. It’s the sort of pinpoint power pitching that Kirby was once known for.
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The Phillies did get to Kirby once in the second. A ground ball single, a bloop single, and a line drive single made it 1-0. It was a pretty weak run. Kirby followed it up by retiring 15 consecutive batters from the fourth inning until the eighth inning, when Bryce Harper picked up a two-out single that knocked Kirby out of the game. José Ferrer made quick work of Luis Arraez to escape the inning unscathed and preserve the Mariners 4-1 lead.
Four runs didn’t seem likely for the Mariners early. They couldn’t touch Aaron Nola for most of this one. I gotta admit: I love watching Nola pitch. I’m a huge fan of the Phillies Ace Factory of the last 15 years, from Cliff Lee, Roy Halladay, and Cole Hamels, to Nola and Zack Wheeler, to the more contemporary choices of Jesús Luzardo and Cristopher Sánchez (one might even give Ranger Suarez a nod for his performance last year).
Nola is a fun variation on the ace formula, an early adopter of “pitching backwards” approach — he throws his curveball as a primary pitch, and then has a trio of fastballs (plus a changeup) to attack each quadrant with precision. He’s the rare righty who’s never averaged better than 93 mph on his four-seamer but posts tip-top strikeout numbers regardless. There’s no such thing as a Hall of Fame pitcher these days, but Nola is right there as an inner-circle, Hall of Very Good pitcher, and I’ll be sad when he hangs it up.
Now, it’s fair to say Nola is a bit past his prime. He entered the day with a 5.12 ERA and 4.92 FIP over 26 starts. He’s still proven capable of missing bats, but he’s had a pesky walk issue and a peskier home run issue that seems to be getting worse with age. He’d given up 31 homers this year when he took the mound Tuesday, the most in the majors.
And he gave up homer number 32 in the second inning when Cal Raleigh stepped to the plate for the time. It was Cal’s fourth home run of the series after he clobbered three — yes, three —in Monday’s series opener. It seems, after five months of misery, Cal is finally breaking out. His teammates greeted him the dugout with borderline disbelief.
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But Nola was otherwise dominant. He got some nice chase and whiff on that biting curveball. He dotted up the Mariners for 20 called strikes, including 15 on the fastball and sinker. It’s not often a team watches that many fastballs for strikes, but snarky “Mariners” grumblings aside, he was getting tons of arm-side run Tuesday that froze batters on the black. He even broke out the cutter, which he uses like a slider, on the third time through the order. I mean, look at this at bat against J.P. Crawford, who was playing in first game after a month-long trip on the IL. (If you want to see what that called strike three look like, it’s the third clip in this pretty filthy highlight package wrapping up Nola’s day).
The Mariners did finally scratch another run across in Nola’s sixth and final inning. Julio hit one of his classic slow choppers to the left of second base and beat the throw to first. He got himself into scoring position with a steal of second. And then he came around to score when Josh Naylor hit a rope back up the middle. Julio has been in a bit of a slump the last few weeks, but his speed hasn’t, and sometimes that’s all he needs to create a run.
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It was the pressure the Mariners put on Nola in the sixth that finally chased him from the game. Orion Kerkering got the ball for the Phillies in the seventh. He got a quick groundout, then loaded the bases by plunking Taylor Ward, giving up a seeing-eye single to Crawford, and walking Brock Rodden The moment felt right for a Randy Arozarena grand slam, but he swung way out of the zone and popped out.
That compelled Don Mattingly to bring in Brooks Raley , apparently unaware of the Mariners longstanding history of winning games against Brooks Raley. He tried catch Dom Canzone on the low-and-away quadrant with a sweeper, and Canzone stayed right on it, slapping a hard liner the other way for a clutch two RBI single to extend the Mariners lead to 4-1.
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Canzone said he was going over the game plan as the inning unfolded, knowing Raley was warming up in the bullpen to face him.
“When he’s warming up, probably about four or five batters deep, just trying to develop a plan with Seitzer, especially with runners on,” Canzone said. “I had an idea he was probably going to try to spin me to death, as they’ve been trying to do all series. So just trusting in that process and just trying to stay behind it. Just trying to stay through the middle of the field, keep it simple as possible.”
The hit gave Andrés Muñoz a bit of cushion for the ninth. It wasn’t the coziest inning, with a pair of walks to put the tying run at the plate. But after pumping a pair of triple-digit heaters, Muñoz spun a brilliant slider low and away that Bryan De La Cruz couldn’t touch for strike three. The Mariners won 4-1, taking the series from the Phillies.
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