DETROIT \u2013 After a while \u2013 after three decades, let\u2019s say \u2013 teams get tired of hearing about their ancestors. The old guys earned their glory, but the subtext is clear: they did something amazing, and you have not.<\/p>\n
Dan Wilson, the nice-guy manager of the Seattle Mariners, was too polite to dismiss the main theme of his news conference before Game 4 of this American League Division Series on Wednesday. This, he was reminded, was the 30th anniversary of the franchise\u2019s signature moment, when Edgar Mart\u00ednez doubled home Ken Griffey Jr. to win the ALDS.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I started towards home and peeled off and went towards second,\u201d said Wilson, the Mariners\u2019 catcher in 1995. \u201cI don\u2019t even really remember. I think I lost my mind at that point.\u201d<\/p>\n
This felt like a good day for the Mariners to lose their minds again. To clinch another trip to the AL Championship Series exactly 30 years after their first? Only the true believers could expect such blissful symmetry. Realists knew better.<\/p>\n
The Mariners don\u2019t do easy narratives. If they did, they wouldn\u2019t be the only team to never win a pennant. If they did, they wouldn\u2019t have left the job half-done in Game 4 of this ALDS at Comerica Park on Wednesday. They would have finished off the Detroit Tigers.<\/p>\n
Instead, they turned a three-run lead into a blowout loss, 9-3, setting up a decisive fifth game in Seattle on Friday against Tarik Skubal, the most dominant pitcher in the sport.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got a lot of resiliency in this club and I have confidence in the guys that we\u2019re going to go out and play good baseball,\u201d said catcher Cal Raleigh, who is 7 for 16 (.438) in this series. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be tough, but we\u2019re up for the challenge and that\u2019s what you do at this time. You face good pitching, you face good teams.\u201d<\/p>\n
Seattle was good enough to win Game 2 last Sunday, when Jorge Polanco homered twice off Skubal and the Mariners rallied off Detroit\u2019s bullpen. They also beat Skubal twice in the regular season, and will not be intimidated by the reigning AL Cy Young Award winner. But they should have avoided a rematch.<\/p>\n
Starter Bryce Miller took a 3-0 lead into the bottom of the fifth inning on Wednesday. That was all the Mariners really wanted from Miller, who had a 5.68 ERA with one quality start in 18 tries this season. So after a single, a fielder\u2019s choice and a hard-hit double by Dillon Dingler, Wilson went to the bullpen.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s how teams do it in the postseason, but for starters, it\u2019s hard to accept.<\/p>\n
\u201cRegular season, I think I go six, seven innings there and we\u2019re in a good spot,\u201d Miller said, adding that he still felt strong.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I had 55 pitches,\u201d Miller said, accurately. \u201cThere\u2019s a leadoff single that was a weak-contact floater over second base. And then we get the ground ball, we\u2019re not able to turn two. I think that was also a splitter that (was) just hit too slow. And then, yeah, I fell behind and they got a ball in the gap. But everything still felt really good and sharp.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then again, Miller acknowledged it was his first playoff start. He was in no position to argue with Wilson, he said, and the bullpen had been very good.<\/p>\n
Lefty Gabe Speier, especially, had been all but untouchable for a month. Since Sept. 6, the day the Mariners began a 17-1 run that settled the AL West, Speier had an 0.75 ERA, allowing one run in 12 innings, with 15 strikeouts and no walks.<\/p>\n
On this day, though, it wasn\u2019t Randy Johnson marching out of the Mariners\u2019 bullpen, as he did on that blessed Sunday in 1995. It was Bobby Ayala, Arthur Rhodes and every other haunted Mariners reliever of playoffs past. They had come to crash the party.<\/p>\n
Speier and the righties who followed \u2013 Eduard Bazardo and Carlos Vargas \u2013 faced 18 batters from the fifth to the eighth innings. They served up two singles, three homers and four doubles, plus two walks, a wild pitch and a stolen base.<\/p>\n
It was loud. It was emphatic. And maybe it showed that the Tigers have gotten too familiar with the Mariners\u2019 relievers. Bazardo has pitched in all four games, Speier in three.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe a little bit,\u201d Speier said. \u201cI think more so today, it just came down to execution. I don\u2019t think I made great pitches, and they got \u2019em.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wilson said he was not concerned with overexposing his relievers \u2013 \u201cI don\u2019t think that\u2019s a risk,\u201d he said \u2013 and that Speier was equally effective against righties and lefties. But Raleigh conceded that familiarity was a factor.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, yeah \u2013 but it goes both ways,\u201d Raleigh said. \u201cThey\u2019ve been throwing the ball good all year. I have confidence they\u2019ll bounce back on Friday.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Mariners will have two rested starters, George Kirby and Luis Castillo, to use against the Tigers in Game 5; those pitchers combined for 9 \u2154 innings in the first two games, allowing only two runs. Another starter, Logan Gilbert, looked dominant for six innings in Game 3 and will have two days\u2019 rest.<\/p>\n
Wilson does not reveal much about his plans, but it stands to reason that Kirby and Castillo will both be in play on Friday. As for Gilbert, while Wilson\u2019s 1995 memories may be hazy, he surely recalls Johnson\u2019s cameo \u2013 on one day of rest \u2013 at the end of the fateful Game 5.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese guys have done this all season long, where they get in tough situations and they know exactly what to do,\u201d Wilson said. \u201cThey do fight back and they do bounce back, and I\u2019m not worried about that at all. No better place to do that than at home.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Mariners have clinched all three of their ALCS berths at home \u2013 with Griffey in 1995, with Alex Rodriguez in 2000 and with Ichiro Suzuki in 2001. Raleigh\u2019s Mariners should have secured their own by now. But they have earned one more chance.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not going to be easy,\u201d Raleigh said. \u201cYou\u2019re not just going to roll teams like that. It\u2019s not usually how it goes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Especially not for the Mariners.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DETROIT \u2013 After a while \u2013 after three decades, let\u2019s say \u2013 teams get tired of hearing about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":210544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,481,99],"class_list":["post-210543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-mlb","tag-seattle-mariners","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/210544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}