HOUSTON — Little has gone according to plan for these Mariners, and even that might be a gross understatement.
This sideways season reached a tipping point Friday night here at Daikin Park, in a place where so many games have gone awry in some many unimaginable ways in recent years. The latest was the Astros’ crushing five-run 10th inning in this series opener that could that have easily completed the better-luck-next-year obituary begging to be written about this team.
Instead, the Mariners reawakened a sense of imagination over the weekend with two of the season’s most fulfilling victories, capped by a 3-2 nail-biter Sunday over their AL West-leading rivals to take the series and, finally, build something is starting to look like momentum.
“That was the complete package,” catcher Cal Raleigh said. “That’s what we can be.”
Bryan Woo, in his second straight impressive road start, threw six sharp innings Sunday night before a national television audience, and Raleigh and Randy Arozarena both homered to help the Mariners (59-66) inch within four games of the Astros (63-62) atop the division.
New reliever Seranthony Domínguez struck out Daulton Varsho swinging over a splitter to strand the bases loaded in the eighth inning, and Andrés Muñoz struck out ex-Mariner Taylor Trammell swinging over a 94.8-mph changeup to end it, two days after he coughed up a two-run lead in Friday’s loss.
One good series and two quality wins are, to be sure, merely a small sample. There’s 120-some games of evidence to suggest these Mariners don’t belong in the playoff discussion.
But these guys do feel like they might have turned a corner this weekend, and they haven’t forgotten the late surge — winning 16 of 17 in September — that propelled them to the AL West title a year ago.
“The year hasn’t really gone the way that we thought it (would), either as a team or individually,” Woo said. “And I think it honestly it makes it easier for everybody to just let a lot of the beginning of the year go and buy into, ‘This is what we’ve got’ as a group.
“Everybody’s in it together. Just continue to stick together. Continue to believe. We still have a lot of baseball left. So take advantage of it.”
With a mixture of elation and irritation, Woo let out a primal scream and smacked the side of his glove with his right hand when Raleigh made a catch of a Jose Altuve pop up in foul territory to close out the sixth inning.
Woo had allowed a leadoff homer to No. 9 hitter, Nick Allen, to cut the Mariners’ lead to 3-2 in the sixth. But he managed to retired the top of the Houston lineup — notably, striking out AL MVP favorite Yordan Alvarez — and then stomped into the visitors’ dugout with as much ferocity as ever.
“I feel like that’s when I’m at my best — just get into that zone, a little bit of that alter ego,” Woo said. “Just kind of a take-no-prisoners type of mentality.”
When the Mariners began this nine-game, three-city road trip, Woo had the highest road ERA of any starting pitcher in the majors. He then threw five shutout innings at Yankee Stadium to begin the trip, and followed that Sunday with six strong innings, allowing three hits (two solo homers) with one walk and five strikeouts.
Arozarena gave Seattle a first-inning lead with a solo homer, his 18th, off Houston ace Hunter Brown.