HOUSTON \u2014 Little has gone according to plan for these Mariners, and even that might be a gross understatement.<\/p>\n
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\u2019 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.<\/p>\n
Instead, the Mariners reawakened a sense of imagination over the weekend with two of the season\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was the complete package,\u201d catcher Cal Raleigh said. \u201cThat\u2019s what we can be.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
New reliever Seranthony Dom\u00ednguez struck out Daulton Varsho swinging over a splitter to strand the bases loaded in the eighth inning, and Andr\u00e9s Mu\u00f1oz 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\u2019s loss.<\/p>\n
One good series and two quality wins are, to be sure, merely a small sample. There\u2019s 120-some games of evidence to suggest these Mariners don\u2019t belong in the playoff discussion.<\/p>\n
But these guys do feel like they might have turned a corner this weekend, and they haven\u2019t forgotten the late surge \u2014 winning 16 of 17 in September \u2014 that propelled them to the AL West title a year ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe year hasn\u2019t really gone the way that we thought it (would), either as a team or individually,\u201d Woo said. \u201cAnd 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, \u2018This is what we\u2019ve got\u2019 as a group.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody\u2019s in it together. Just continue to stick together. Continue to believe. We still have a lot of baseball left. So take advantage of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Woo had allowed a leadoff homer to No. 9 hitter, Nick Allen, to cut the Mariners\u2019 lead to 3-2 in the sixth. But he managed to retired the top of the Houston lineup \u2014 notably, striking out AL MVP favorite Yordan Alvarez \u2014 and then stomped into the visitors\u2019 dugout with as much ferocity as ever.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like that\u2019s when I\u2019m at my best \u2014 just get into that zone, a little bit of that alter ego,\u201d Woo said. \u201cJust kind of a take-no-prisoners type of mentality.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Arozarena gave Seattle a first-inning lead with a solo homer, his 18th, off Houston ace Hunter Brown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON \u2014 Little has gone according to plan for these Mariners, and even that might be a gross…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":408768,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57,91542],"class_list":["post-408767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-mariners"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408767\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/408768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}