Lazaro Montes hit the longest home run ever recorded at T-Mobile Park, and the Mariners continued to pitch like the worst staff in the majors.
The Mariners took their latest bludgeoning on Tuesday with a 10-5 loss to the Rangers. Bryce Miller got the start and was bad and brief, and the bullpen folded behind him. The Mariners are last in the majors by just about every pitching category since the All-Star break, and there’s no sign it will let up any time soon.
The bad pitching made Tuesday’s game long, boring, miserable, and predictable, except for one play:
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Lazaro Montes got a middle-middle fastball from Cal Quantrill in the fourth inning and hit it a very long way. It was the longest home run hit at T-Mobile Park in the Statcast Era. I can tell you the metrics — 116.1 mph, 24 degrees, 474 feet — but you really have to witness it yourself.
I’ve never seen a batter hit one on the concourse in center field. Most of the very impressive homers that get hit in Seattle are going to the Hit-It-Here Cafe, or the bleachers in left. The homers that land in the space between left-center and right-center tend to have impressive metrics, but rarely have the same visual effect, since most batters are physically limited to the first few rows.
That’s what I thought would be the case when Montes flipped his bat and implied a homer. I’m aware of his infinite power, and I didn’t doubt it would impress. But when the camera turned to center and started to zoom, I thought “wow, this might get halfway up,” which alone would have deserved a good amount of space in this recap. Instead, it just kept going and going and going, so far up into the stands that I couldn’t tell where it landed on the first few replays. When I eventually realized what he’d done, I just… I don’t know — I really don’t know what I’ve witnessed.
The only thing that comes to mind is this Carlos Peguero homer from 2013, which might have gone further, but landed somewhere out of frame limiting the effect.
Montes’ blast was most of the Mariners offense on Tuesday. They scratched across nine hits and a walk, and picked up a couple more runs in garbage time. But five runs just isn’t enough when the pitching staff gives up 10.
Miller made his second start after being moved to the bullpen in late August. He never actually got an appearance as a reliever because Emerson Hancock landed on the injured list shortly after the decision, allowing Miller to slot back into the rotation. In his first start last week, Miller was pulled in the middle of the fifth inning after just 63 pitches, implying the org still sees him in something of a hybrid role going forward.
It’s hard to say what the plan was meant to be on Tuesday. Miller threw 84 pitches — close to a starter’s workload — but only made it through 3 2/3 innings before getting the hook. Whether this was a true start or a cold open or some pork-themed invention, Miller didn’t execute. He picked up six strikeouts and 10 whiffs, but gave up three walks and four hits, and often seemed to spin his wheels, unable to put batters away with any sort of efficiency. He eventually handed the ball to the bullpen with the bases loaded in the middle of the fourth inning.
“It’s frustrating,” Miller said after the game. “Too many long at-bats. It felt like everything was five to nine pitches… Overall, I gotta do a better job with having quicker innings, quicker at-bats, and not having to burn the bullpen.”
Any hope for Miller in this one died pretty quickly. In the first inning, he threw a first-pitch, middle-middle fastball to Corey Seager, who mashed it 418 feet to right. (This felt like a very long home run at the time).
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Miller entered the fourth down just 2-0, but was already at 63 pitches. After loading the bases with two singles and a walk, Dan Wilson went to José Ferrer to try to escape the inning. Ferrer gave up a hard grounder that went right through Cole Young at second base to make it 4-0.
That kind of felt like the game. Sure, Montes’ homer brought the Mariners back within one in the bottom of the frame. But they still had five innings left to cover with a bad and overworked bullpen. I feel like I’ve written some version of this in every recap I’ve done the last few months. This was the dynamic that led to 22-0 and 19-2 losses in Miller starts last month, for instance. Had the Mariners not had an off day Monday, that might have been the case again. Instead, the bullpen was rested and everyone was available for a normal-bad pitching performance. Eduard Bazardo got shelled in the fifth, giving up five runs on a pair of homers. Cooper Criswell gave up another run in the seventh. Carlos Vargas, Mickael Rucker, and Hoby Milner each managed clean innings.
The Mariners needed seven pitchers to throw 193 pitches to scratch and claw and fight their way to only allow 10 runs in this one. Kade Anderson gets the ball tomorrow, and since he’s also on a fairly strict pitch count, this could be the start of another very long week.
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