Mariners fire on all cylinders, defeat Padres 8-3

Logan Gilbert makes All-Star-worthy start; bats reward him with run support in easy 8-3 win over Padres

Consistency maybe isn’t the sexiest skill a baseball player can have, but it’s one that ensures long, productive careers. Since the day he made the big leagues, Logan Gilbert has been thinking about what he needs to do in order to stay there; he developed his splitter almost as a hobby project, something he was thinking about for years down the line when he was thinking about how he’d continue to be effective after suffering the decline in fastball velocity that’s attendant with getting older. He’s obsessed with being able to go deep into games: more than posting gaudy strikeout numbers or the most minuscule ERA, Gilbert wants to clear six innings, every time, which he considers “the bare minimum.” He’s been a workhorse since he was a college starter at Stetson University, and he’s brought that mentality to the Mariners, who have depended—whether they know it or not—on Logan pulling them out of losing spirals with his ability to pitch deeply, effectively, into games. In return, the Mariners have rewarded Gilbert this season by winning just 10 of his 19 starts, and in those losses, giving him an average of under 1.5 runs per game. Contrast that with Gilbert’s record in games where he gets four or more runs of support: he’s now 34-0, after the Mariners finally gave him some support tonight.

On the other side, making just his seventh big league start, Padres starter Adam Mazur—pressed into service due to injuries to the Padres lineup—scuffled a little in the first inning, walking J.P. Crawford and hitting Mitch Garver with a pitch to put two one with no out. After Luke Raley struck out, Julio Rodríguez laced the first pitch he saw, a slider in the heart of the plate, into left field for an early 1-0 lead. That was all the Mariners would get, as Cal Raleigh struck out swinging and Dominic Canzone popped out on two pitches. Mazur went secondary-heavy in the first, throwing his curveball and slider almost three times as much as his fastball, but the Mariners weren’t able to catch up with those lesser secondaries despite them landing in the middle of the plate without much life.

Thankfully, they seemed to make an adjustment in the second, with Jorge Polanco lacing that slider for a base hit, followed by Ty France pouncing on a first-pitch slider for a well-hit double (105 mph EV) that got deep enough into Petco Park to score Polanco from first. Josh Rojas and J.P. Crawford made hard-hit outs, and Garver got under a first-pitch sinker for an easy popout, to strand Ty France at third base.

The Mariners added on in the third; with Julio on base, having poked another ground ball up the middle, Cal Raleigh took a curveball at the bottom of the zone and, seemingly using one hand, gently lifted it just over the right field fence to put the Mariners up 4-0, clearing the Logan Gilbert Mark and basically ensuring a win.

But the Mariners weren’t done scoring off Mazur; in the fifth, Julio finally put the hurting on one of Mazur’s subpar sliders, blasting this nearly center-cut pitch 411 feet:

Meanwhile, Logan Gilbert was nearly perfect the first time through the Padres order, needing just 30 pitches to get through the first nine hitters. He got a little unlucky batted ball luck when Donavan Solano chopped at a slider well below the zone, rolling it down the left field line and into potential bad-luck double territory, except an excellent play by Josh Rojas kept Solano at first, setting up a double play off the bat of newly-minted All-Star rookie Jackson Merrill, who went after a split in a 1-2 count.

The Padres were clearly in swing mode, and had a lot of trouble trying to hold up against Gilbert’s pitches that were around but not in the zone. In this at-bat, Gilbert had Higashioka in an 0-2 count. He expanded the zone with a curveball, which Higashioka held up on, and then came right back with the same pitch, just slightly more over the plate but still out of the zone, coaxing an ugly swing out of Higashioka.

Higashioka wasn’t Gilbert’s only victim on that pitch, either: he’d used almost the same sequence to Manny Machado to lead off the second for his first strikeout of the day.

And while they won’t get the Pitching Ninja treatment, there was a significant amount of weak-contact outs, half-swings where it looks like hitters were caught in between leading to weak ground ball outs. It took until the bottom of the sixth inning for Gilbert to reach a three-ball count against any hitter, as Higashioka decided he was tired of ending up on the wrong side of Pitching Ninja and worked a two-out walk against Gilbert, his first baserunner since the second—although that was quickly erased by Luis Arraez going after the first pitch of his at bat and getting under a cutter for another weak-contact flyout.

Meanwhile, former Mariner farmhand Stephen Kolek took over for Mazar, who only mustered 4.2 innings against the Mariners, cleaning up his fifth inning and pitching a scoreless sixth with three strikeouts. Yuki Matsui worked the seventh and was the victim of a charged-up Julio Rodríguez, who stung a splitter into left field for his fourth hit of the day, a double putting him a triple shy of the cycle. He’d then advance to third on a wild pitch, although he probably could have stayed at second, because Cal decided he wanted another, this time from the other side of the plate:

Also, it’s just the seventh time, and yet Cal Raleigh is the only player who has two of those times. Extend Cal Raleigh.

Hilariously, the Mariners still kept their double-digit strikeout streak alive even while piling it on, because Rome wasn’t built in a day or some such nonsense. But hey, you can handle some strikeouts when you’re also driving the ball all over the park, and that’s what the Mariners did tonight.

The Padres finally managed to get something going against Gilbert down the back third of the game, as he gave up a pair of home runs: one solo shot in the seventh, as Gilbert left a cutter in the middle of the plate for Cronenworth, and the big damage, a two-out, two-run shot to Higashioka, who caught a slider on the plate and just managed to squeak it over the left field fence. It’s sucky because Servais lifted Gilbert after that homer, ending his bid for a complete game, which would have been such a good follow-up after earning his first All-Star nomination—but a game where he utterly dominated the hot-hitting Padres, striking out seven and walking just one, is a pretty good follow-up nonetheless. Tayler Saucedo got the final out of the inning easily, capping the damage at just two runs.

The Mariners took one of those runs back in the top of the ninth, when Cal Raleigh doubled off Wandy Peralta, who had to leave the game with injury, and Victor Robles promptly followed that up with a a double off Enyel de los Santos. Robles confirmed that he’d made a bit of a swing change with Seattle’s hitting coaches since coming over to the Mariners; I’m interested in seeing more of him, which we might, as Dominic Canzone had to leave tonight’s game with an lower-body injury that he’d apparently suffered in Sunday’s game when he made the diving play in the outfield. Dom was trying to play through it but apparently it flared up on him after his double tonight. Also, Julio was lifted tonight due to some calf tightness, but that seems to be of less concern to Servais than Canzone, who will have an MRI tomorrow.

We can’t leave tonight without talking about Gregory Santos, who got some low-leverage work tonight as his Mariner debut after finally coming off the IL. Santos was dazzling, firing sliders and his hard sinker, touching 101 mph and averaging 100 on the pitch. He also chirped at Jurickson Profar, who wasn’t happy about Santos pitching him inside, chiding him back to the dugout after Profar grounded out and immediately enduring him to Mariners fans everywhere. Fun times. Here’s hoping they can continue to bring this energy tomorrow.