Seattle’s see-saw season has seen more sawing downward under the sea level of .500 than it has seen not doing that, and coming into today’s game they were sitting seven games below that level. The last few weeks, in small amounts, have seen the Mariners tepidly challenge that perception. Coming into the series in Toronto, the ebb and flow was slightly in their favor with a 6-4 record of their last 10 games. With the loss in game one yesterday, that evened it to 5-5. An oddity of their recent play has been some truly atrocious and at times historically terrible blowout losses sometimes paired with wins that have been either comfortable, or at least objectively less anxiety-inducing.
So with the game one loss being truly, terribly, awful, the wider royal we could hopefully find forgiveness for the optimists among us believing in the possibility that today’s game could be one such win in that pairing. And if you want to take a half glass full approach: it still was (almost) true! For the first almost exactly half of this game the Mariners were not only in the lead, they were shutting out their opponent.
For the first four and a half innings the Mariners weren’t doing so much that everything felt perfect, but it was fine, comfortable, and even a little fun. Also definitively far from perfect tonight, Toronto starter José Soriano would go on to have a Quality Start and then some I’m sure Blue Jays fans also found fine, comfortable, and even a little fun, and the first inning matched that tone. Less than ten pitches and out on contact, the top of the Seattle lineup went down in order. Josh Naylor continued that trend to start the second inning, but Cal Raleigh would follow it up with a very Cal In Toronto thing and give Seattle fans a little bit of the aforementioned fun and Soriano some of the aforementioned less than perfect. It was Cal Raleigh’s 19th home run of the season, and put Seattle on the board first.
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Soriano escaped the second after that with a ground out and then a called strikeout to Cole Young and then Taylor Ward. The third would see J.P. Crawford, returned from the IL, single to start the inning. Brock Rodden dampened that moment with a fly-out, and then Randy Arozarena washed it away entirely when he hit into an inning-ending double play. The fourth inning is when fun baseball would dare rear its ugly, threatening head at Mariners fandom once again.
Not at first, of course. Canzone laced a 100.3 mph line-out right at 2B Charles McAdoo, and Julio went down swinging on a 2-2 count to quickly make it two outs. Josh Naylor next landed a single, and Soriano had trouble locating the zone for a few batters and walked Raleigh and Young, setting things up for Taylor Ward. A lot of the conversation around Ward since his mid-season acquisition has been about the lack of a return on that trade, from a double-edged threat of inconsistent health and nearly non-existent offensive contributions when healthy. After his first at bat, this pivotal moment provided perfect opportunity to at the very least muffle those shouts to a whisper, if but for a day longer.
Taylor Ward did not disappoint! It was fun, even! A sharp liner to left and two runners scoring later, and the Mariners were ahead 3-0 on the RBI single.
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Next up to bat was Crawford, and he grounded into a force-out to end the inning, but the bases loaded opportunity hadn’t been wasted. Seattle’s rookie year pitcher in only his second game and first road game, Kade Anderson, would now be able to go on in the game with a lead comfortable enough to leave room for anything around Quality.
Kade Anderson never reached that quality start in terms of innings, no surprise given his stated pitch limit of roughly 80 pitches, but he was that good in terms of damage allowed. Anderson struck out the first Blue Jay batter of the day, Brett Batemen, on a 2-2 fastball above the zone, and tackled the next two batters with outs on contact from pitches that were honestly far too middle. Kade only gave up a walk in the third, losing a 3-2 battle to Kazuma Okamoto. Well, lost on the edges, and it could have easily gone his way.
Kade faced four batters in the third, giving up his first hit, a single on a very well executed bunt from Myles Straw, and escaping the inning with an Alejandro Kirk swinging strikeout. In the fourth the Blue Jays would once again threaten the rookie pitcher, with a one pitch George Springer double and a full count Okamoto walk, before he would escape with a fly-out and a pop-out to McAdoo and Clement, respectively.
Anderson would start his half of the fifth inning beautifully, striking out Daz Cameron on three pitches, but the inning would go on to end without him. Myles Straw singled on a meatball slider and Brett Bateman walked on a 3-1 count, and Kade’s night was done as Eduard Bazardo came in. Bazardo wasn’t able to hold those inherited batters, and so Kade’s final line was 4.1 IP, two earned runs given up on three hits, with three walks and three strikeouts, and 54 of his 85 pitches for strikes with eight whiffs.
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For what it is worth, Kade Anderson seemed to suffer a little rookie squeeze on his strike zone, with a few pitches that Raleigh could have challenged, but there were also times where Anderson did himself no favors either in being too wild or too center.
As far as I’ve told you so far, for about exactly half of the baseball game, all was overall well for the Mariners. Kade Anderson did about as well as you could expect, Raleigh was properly pestering Jays in their own roost. Then, the second arguably more important half of the baseball game happened, and all of those good things mattered none, at least in terms of outcome.
Of course it didn’t immediately fall off of a cliff. After Bazardo came in he handed Kirk his second swinging strikeout of the night, getting him to swing under a 3-2 fastball on the top shelf. Vladdy then got some 3-2 revenge and worked a walk to make it full with the two inherited batters. Then eternally-annoying-to-the-Mariners George Springer worked yet another full count, this one finished off by a wild pitch from Bazardo that walked in one run by force and with some less than stellar plate coverage from Eduardo himself allowed another to score and bringing the Jays within one run.
José A. Ferrer started the sixth for Seattle, and was the one to give up the lead. McAdoo walked to start the inning but Ferrer recovered enough to get Ernie Clement to line out and Daz Cameron to ground out. Myles Straw worked it full and walked, a phrase I long grew tired of typing, Bateman singled in McAdoo, and Alejandro Kirk finally exacted revenge for his earlier flailings by driving in Straw with a single of his own. Carlos Vargas took over for and finished the inning for Ferrer, and comfortably finished the rest of the game the Mariners needed from the ‘pen, putting in 2.1 innings of work and striking out two without allowing a hit or a walk.
Flowers to Vargas for being one of the lone bright spots in the back half of this game, because it certainly wasn’t the hitting. Soriano finished a full seven innings and racked up six of the Mariners’ ten strikeouts. Silver linings and flowers in the cracks of asphalt floors can do little to distract from the dark cloud that settled over the game though, the reasons for why a close loss felt so toothless. Why a close season feels so lost. The top three of the order (Arozarena, Canzone, and Rodríguez) all went hitless with five strikeouts and only one walk among them. The only hitters with multi-hit nights were Naylor and Raleigh.
Maybe today was the game that was needed to correct that back and forth rhythm into a direction that favors the last month trend towards a playoff appearance. Maybe by resetting the luck halfway through the game instead of in between them, that will allow them to salvage tomorrow’s game from falling victim to another loss and so a series sweep. If that is the case, I will gladly take the joys in the first half of signs of life in Raleigh’s bat and continued proof from Anderson that he could probably hang at this level. However I won’t be surprised if it means none of those things, because in a lot of ways today very much felt like being on the see-saw, because the Mariners falling off today felt exactly like falling on one’s ass.
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