NEW YORK – Roughly 24 hours earlier, the Mariners felt the effects of not being able to use lefty Gabe Speier to pitch in a leverage situation.
With their best lefty reliever unavailable due to back tightness, manager Dan Wilson had to try and navigate a series of left-handed hitters with middle reliever Michael Rucker while protecting a 1-0 lead
It did not go well. The lead and the game were eventually lost. Fans were apoplectic at Wilson’s bullpen management even after he revealed Speier was unavailable.
On Wednesday night with Yankee Stadium loud from cheering and not its ridiculous sound system, Speier came jogging in from the bullpen in the bottom of the seventh of a tie game, ready to face a run of left-handed hitters.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t finish what he started, giving up three runs while recording only two outs.
Even in a game where the Mariners’ offense was more productive than it had been in weeks, the deficit, a three-run deficit, which later ballooned to five runs, was too much to overcome.
With their 10-5 loss to the Yankees, the Mariners have now dropped six in a row and will try to avoid being swept in back-to-back series, sending Logan Gilbert to the mound on Thursday afternoon. The Yankees will counter with talented lefty Max Fried.
“We’ve got to come back tomorrow and try to find a way to get it done,” manager Dan Wilson said.
Speier, who last pitched a week ago on Aug. 5 due to a two-game suspension followed by the back issue, didn’t look sharp. Whether it was the back issue still lingering or the longer layoff, the velocity on Speier’s pitches were slightly down and they lacked life and movement. He also didn’t have his normal command.
“Yeah, it’s been a few days since he’s been out there so he probably felt a little different out there,” Wilson said. “But he’s done that before, where he’s been pretty flexible. They were just able to get to him tonight.”
He retired pinch hitter Amed Rosario on a fly ball to left on a four-seam fastball in the middle of the plate. George Lombard Jr. started the problems with a soft single on a first-pitch sinker. Trent Grisham stayed on an 0-1 slider, sending a line drive to the gap in right-center to score Lombard and give the Yankees their first lead. Ben Rice followed with a hard ground ball up the middle that hit off the mound and bounced wildly over Colt Emerson’s glove to score Grisham to make it 7-5. The inning continued to snowball when Speier hit Spencer Jones in the leg with a wayward sinker. Both runners moved up 90 feet on a double steal.
He came back to strike out Luis Garcia Jr. for the second out of the inning, giving some hope of ending the drama. Instead of going to right-hander Seranthony Dominguez, who was warming up in the bullpen, Wilson opted to walk the right-handed hitting Heliot Ramos with first base open to have Speier face lefty Jazz Chisholm with the bases loaded. Speier walked the free-swinging Chisholm on eight pitches to force in another run.
Speier may have given up the lead, but the Mariners lost the game when they allowed the Yankees to answer the early runs scored.
Seattle got an uneven start from Bryce Miller, who worked six innings, allowing five runs on eight hits with a walk and five strikeouts.
All five of his runs allowed came with two outs and four came in the bottom half of innings where the Mariners had scored in the top half.
“I had good first inning, and the offense came out swinging it, got us that early lead. I wasn’t able to hold it,” Miller said. “I feel like I threw the ball well, but I just couldn’t execute. I didn’t make the pitches when I needed to. All the runs that they scored on me were with two outs. I’ve just got to be able to finish innings.”
The Mariners jumped on Yankees starter Will Warren early on homers from Randy Arozarena and Julio Rodríguez in the first inning.
Arozarena, who homered for the second straight day, sent a fly ball into the right-field corner with Cole Young on first base for a 2-0 lead.
Two batters later, Rodríguez launched an opposite-field blast into the upper deck in right field for his 19th homer of the season.
The Mariners gave a run back in the bottom of the second, aided by the first of two poor throws that missed the cutoff man, allowing a runner to score.
Dom Canzone, who made the first of those two wayward throws, got the run right back with a solo homer into the upper deck in the third inning for a 4-1 lead.
But Miller couldn’t come back with a shutdown bottom half of the inning, giving up a leadoff double to Austin Wells, walking Rice and then giving up a double to Spencer Jones on a low 2-2 fastball. The line drive to left field got past Arozarena, who got an awkward read and then missed the cutoff man, turning a run-scoring double into a two-run double.
“I threw Rice six splitters and he had a good at-bat,” Miller said. “I felt like if we walked Rice it was fine because he had a base open and we get to Jones. At the time, I felt like if I execute heaters up and get the splitters under, then we take care of him. I didn’t get the fastball up.”
Seattle took its last lead, 5-3, in the fifth on Josh Naylor’s run-scoring single to center to make it 5-3.
But again, Miller allowed runs after getting runs. After getting two quick outs to start the fifth, Grisham pulled a low sinker for a solo homer just over the wall in right on a soft fly ball. Rice (0-1 slider) and Jones (first-pitch fastball) followed with back-to-back doubles to tie the game at 5-5.
“We got two quick outs, and then it was in a span of four pitches, a home run and two doubles,” he said. “I would have had six pretty good innings if I changed two pitches that I execute.”
Besides the two poor throws, Colt Emerson also failed to get a sac bunt down in the second inning after Brendan Donovan doubled and Cal Raleigh walked. Emerson struck out for the first of what would be four times on the night. The failed sac bunt hurt even more with Taylor Ward hitting into an inning-ending double play.
“Those things do come back to get you,” Wilson said of the mistakes. “You look at games like this and you see where you could have you know made improvements and that’s certainly one of the areas.”
To make matters worse for the Mariners, Cole Young was feeling dizziness while on the bench in the middle innings. The Mariners opted to remove him from the game and replace him with Leo Rivas in the seventh.
“He’s still feeling dizzy,” Wilson said postgame. “We’ll see how he feels in the morning.”