In front of a sell-out crowd of 45,775 on fireworks night on a day the stands were packed with Red Sox and World Cup fans alike, the Mariners fizzled out, dropping the opening game against Boston in dismal fashion. By the ninth inning, a loud \u201clet\u2019s go Red Sox\u201d chant had erupted, with the only joy for Mariners fans a garbage-time Julio Rodr\u00edguez two-run shot.<\/p>\n
Every piggyback game feels like two games, but the contrast tonight was especially stark. In the Bryce Miller game, the story was: one ambush home run and a lot of good pitching between; in the Luis Castillo-led part of the piggyback, the story was: one bad and BABIP-fueled bad inning, one also-not-great-inning and some decent pitching between. But the part of the story that was consistent throughout the game was the Mariners offense once again failing to do much against a left-handed starter, and failing to capitalize on opportunities when they had them.<\/p>\n
Bryce Miller had a clean first and was one out away from a clean second when Caleb Durbin ambushed a first-pitch fastball at the top of the zone and yanked it over the wall in left field just enough to clear the fence – a home run at just 13 MLB parks including T-Mobile and Fenway. Maybe that shook Miller\u2019s confidence somewhat, because he then struggled to put away Marcelo Mayer, getting into a ten-pitch battle that ended with Mayer staring at a fastball on the plate for a called strike three.<\/p>\n
Miller didn\u2019t have a clean inning after the first, but he was able to face the minimum in both the third and fourth thanks to a well-timed double play, getting Mickey Gaspar, who has both the name and countenance of a 1900s circus strongman, to tap into an inning-ending double play on the splitter. In the fourth, he got an assist from Cal Raleigh (welcome back Cal) throwing out Wilyer Abreu trying to steal after Abreu had jumped on a first-pitch fastball for a ground ball single. Miller\u2019s fifth inning was a cherry on top of a strong day, with two strikeouts and a weak groundout from Meyer, who\u2019d given him the tough at-bat earlier. Miller doubled up on the curveball to Jarren Duran after Duran flinched after the pitch for his sixth strikeout of the day, and then went split-sweeper to Durbin, who had homered off him earlier, for his seventh strikeout.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything felt good,\u201d said Miller postgame, noting that he didn\u2019t even have a chance to get to all his pitches because he was seeing so much success on the four-seamer. \u201cI didn\u2019t even throw a cutter today, so we still had that in the back pocket, and I think I threw one sinker\u2026it\u2019s never easy coming out of a one run game, especially when – I felt like I was rolling. But it was. You know. It was the plan going into it, so not really much that I can say to change anybody\u2019s mind\u2026when there\u2019s a pre-set plan, there\u2019s not really much arguing you can do.\u201d<\/p>\n
At least Miller was able to avenge himself against Durbin and Meyer, but unfortunately, that\u2019s where the moral victory part of the day ends, leaving just the less-fun defeat part. Left-handed pitching has been the b\u00eate noire for the Mariners this season, and Ranger Suarez is a particularly good lefty, so the Mariners were already facing an uphill climb, but four strikeouts in the first two innings – with two of those coming from righties in Cal and Julio – isn\u2019t exactly a recipe for success. The Mariners didn\u2019t have a baserunner until the fourth, with Cal working a walk off Suarez in his second time facing him, declining this time to chase after the curveball, but Julio wasn\u2019t able to make a similar adjustment, getting punched out looking on the sinker, and then Josh Naylor battled heroically for eight pitches but wound up popping out softly.<\/p>\n
On as the second part of the piggyback, Luis Castillo had a strong first inning of work but a BABIP-fueled meltdown inning in the seventh. Ceddane Rafaela doubled off a fastball up in the zone to lead off the inning, giving the Red Sox a roughly 70% chance to increase their lead. What they\u2019d wind up doing is putting the game out of reach. Some of it was Castillo\u2019s fault: he lost the handle on a slider, allowing Rafaela to score from third to make it 2-0, but if you like Increased Velo Castillo – he was touching 97-98 on his fastball – you also have to be prepared for that increased velo on the slider, like this 90 mph one that Castillo said \u201csurprised\u201d him.<\/p>\n
If Castillo had been able to cap the damage there, that would have been one thing, but things quickly got worse with four straight singles – two hard-hit on pitches that caught way too much plate, and then a pair of bad-luck more weakly hit ones off the slider that found holes. A sac fly on another slider brought in the fifth run of the inning and all of a sudden the Mariners were looking at a 5-0 deficit in a game where they were being no-hit.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of those things where sometimes things just don\u2019t go your way,\u201d said Castillo postgame through translator Freddy Lllanos.<\/p>\n
After the blowup in the top of the inning, the Mariners attempted to answer back, finally knocking Suarez out of the game in the seventh. Cal walked again facing Suarez, but Julio went after a cutter for an easy flyout for the first out. That left it to the lefty Naylor, who finally, finally broke up the no-hitter with a ringing double to right-center.<\/p>\n
After Josh Naylor\u2019s no-hitter-breaking double, Dominic Canzone grounded out for the second out of the inning, but Cole Young was able to work a walk. A moment of appreciation for Cole Young: facing a tough lefty, he swung at strikes only, didn\u2019t expand and chase the curveball or cutter, and overall did his best. If the Mariners want to leftyproof their lineup, Cole Young having at-bats like this will go a long way towards doing it. With the Mariners threatening, the Red Sox opted to bring in righty Justin Slaten, meaning Dan Wilson could free J.P. Crawford from the bench to try to come up with a clutch two-out RBI. Sadly Crawford couldn\u2019t come up with any of his signature two-out magic, striking out and stranding the bases loaded.<\/p>\n
The Red Sox were able to get one more run off Castillo with another set of two-out back-to-back doubles in the ninth, but by that point the game was pretty well out of hand for the Mariners. Julio Rodr\u00edguez provided the lone offensive highlight, hitting a garbage-time homer (with Cal aboard with his third walk of the day, the Red Sox pitching had zero interest in pitching to Cal Raleigh in this game from either side of the plate) off Tommy Kahnle, last seen being bullied by the Mariners in the ALDS. No no-hitter and no shutout goals achieved, then, but the more elusive \u201cwin back to back games\u201d goal remains out of reach for these frustratingly inconsistent 2026 Mariners.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In front of a sell-out crowd of 45,775 on fireworks night on a day the stands were packed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":748930,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,273264,273265,85],"class_list":["post-748929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-seattle-mariners-game-recaps","tag-seattle-mariners-scores-standings","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=748929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/748930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=748929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=748929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=748929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}