‘Mediocre’ Mariners back to familiar .500 despite Kolten Wong’s late-game heroics
MINNEAPOLIS — For a team that president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto described as “we’re a .500 team that’s about as mediocre as you’re going to be and we’ve done it in a very .500 way,” Monday’s outcome was almost too fitting with numerical synergy.
In their 100th game of 2023, the Mariners wasted a quality outing from starter Luis Castillo and squandered unexpected late-game homer heroics from Kolten Wong, losing 4-3 in extra innings to the Minnesota Twins.
Carlos Correa’s line-drive single to right field in the bottom of the 10th allowed Donovan Solano to race home from third base for the walk-off victory.
“You want to be winning more than breaking even,” Wong said. “It’s hard to take right now. The team, we believe in ourselves so much. We believe that we’re a good team. We’ve just had some tough goes of it.”
The disappointing defeat left Seattle with a 50-50 record.
Yep, 50 wins, 50 losses and nothing to think that they won’t continue to tread water at that level. They are too stubborn to stink and too unsteady to swim. A path to an 81-81 season seems clear and without obstruction.
There is a long-used baseball adage that every team — no matter how good, how bad or how much ownership is tanking — wins 50 (though the Oakland Athletics may try to prove that wrong) and every team loses 50, leaving the other 62 games to define a season.
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But this loss and so many others this season could’ve been banked as wins in that category of games that helps determine a successful season. It’s how the Mariners played their way to 90 wins the last two seasons. Instead, they are now 12-19 in one-run games and 4-9 in extra-inning games.
“It’s a disappointing way to start a road trip,” Mariners manager Scott Servais said.
Down to their last out in the ninth inning and trailing by a run, the Mariners were a strike away from taking that 50th loss in about 2 hours and 10 minutes of game time.
But unwilling to cede defeat, Servais emptied what was left of his bench in hopes of finding some way to scratch out a run against Twins right-handed reliever Griffin Jax.
Down 0-2 after two pitches, pinch-hitter Cal Raleigh battled the count back to 2-2 and singled up the middle to keep the game going.
It brought to the plate veteran infielder Kolten Wong, who was pinch-hitting for Jose Caballero.
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In what has been one of the most frustrating seasons in his career, Wong lost his starting job due to lack of performance and has played sparingly since.
On the third consecutive slider he saw from Jax, Wong sent a fly ball to right field that barely made it into the flower planters in the front of a seating box that hangs out over the high wall.
“Being in the league for a while, you just understand that opportunities are going to come up, so you’ve just got to stay ready,” Wong said. “And I didn’t know if I was going to called for that at-bat. I was just in the cage trying to do my prep work and just trying to be ready just in case.”
His second homer of the season gave the Mariners a 3-2 lead.
“Off the bat, I knew I didn’t get it great, but I was hoping it would clip the wall and get the tying run home,” he said. “To see it get over is pretty cool.”
A crowd of 22,969, most ready to get out of the sticky July evening, was left stunned at Wong’s exploits.
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With a one-run lead, the Mariners turned to Andres Munoz instead of Paul Sewald in the save situation.
“He was our most rested guy in our bullpen,” Servais said of Munoz. “I liked the spot he was in. I like him against anybody.”
With lefties Alex Kirilloff and Max Kepler scheduled to hit in the bottom of the ninth, the matchup of Munoz was also slightly better. All four of the homers allowed by Sewald this season have come against left-handed hitters.
Munoz didn’t give up a homer, but still lost the lead. With one out, Kirilloff stayed on a low 98-mph fastball away, sending a double to the gap in left-center. Kepler took advantage of a 2-2 slider that stayed in the middle of the plate, ripping it into right field for a tying double.
Munoz limited the damage to that one run, giving Seattle a chance to retake the lead in extra innings.
Instead, reliever Jorge Lopez, who has struggled with command, retired Julio Rodriguez, Eugenio Suarez and Teoscar Hernandez with relative ease in top of the 10th.
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“That’s the middle of our lineup and those are guys we lean on to come through,” Servais said.
Needing one run, the Twins sacrifice-bunted Solano to third and even tried an unsuccessful safety squeeze bunt before Correa won the game.
“Heck of an effort to come back late in the game, but unfortunately we didn’t do much early,” Servais said.
Seattle got a strong outing from Castillo, who was facing the Twins in back-to-back starts after pitching against them Wednesday at T-Mobile Park.
Castillo worked seven innings, allowing two runs on four hits with two walks and nine strikeouts. It was his 11th quality start (six innings and three runs or fewer) this season.
“Luis Castillo was awesome tonight,” Servais said. “He gave us seven strong innings. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get much going.”
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His runs allowed came in the fifth inning after he was given a 1-0 lead on Tom Murphy’s solo homer to center off Twins starter Kenta Maeda.
After Kepler led off with a single, it looked as if Castillo would work another scoreless frame. He got Matt Wallner to fly out to center and got some defensive help when Suarez made a pretty over-the-shoulder catch in foul territory for the second out.
But Trevor Larnach was able to lift a 1-0 slider to deep right field that bounced off the wall just out of the reach of Hernandez’s leaping attempt. The ball bounced away for a triple.
Christian Vazquez followed with a single to right field that allowed Larnach to trot home with the go-ahead run.
Source: The Seattle Times
