Late heroics from AJ Pollock, Eugenio Suarez send M’s past A’s in 10
OAKLAND, Calif. — AJ Pollock, much like his new team, spent the first month of the season searching for some sort of life at the plate. Something, anything, to get his bat going, to spark a Mariners team desperate for some consistent offensive production.
“Yeah, it sucks,” the veteran slugger acknowledged late Tuesday. “It’s not fun. You know, you’re having fun with the guys … and if the team’s struggling, you really want to be able to say you’re contributing. It hasn’t quite happened the way I drew it up, but it’s early and you’ve just got to keep working.”
Twenty-four hours later, Pollock came through with a clutch home run in the ninth inning to tie the score, and Eugenio Suarez delivered the game-winning, three-run blast with two outs in the 10th inning to give the Mariners an unlikely 7-2 comeback victory over the Oakland A’s on Wednesday night.
The Mariners offense, lifeless for most of the night, broke loose with five runs in the 10th inning, all coming with two outs.
Suarez’s third home run of the season could not have come at a better time, a three-run shot off Adam Oller the opposite way to right field that just cleared the 15-foot wall.
That gave the Mariners a 5-2 lead. As he rounded first base, Suarez turned back and pointed at the Mariners dugout as it erupted in celebration.
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“I went to that at-bat with nothing on my mind. Just blank. Zero on my mind,” Suarez said. “Just relax my mind, see the ball as long as I can and make a good swing on that baseball. Even if I hit a blooper, I know I got a chance to get an RBI and win the game. Obviously I got a homer and I feel great. Sometimes when you try (too) much, the result’s not there.”
J.P. Crawford added a two-out, two-run single in the 10th for the game’s final runs.
Pollock put together perhaps the most important at-bat of the season so far for the Mariners (14-16), fouling off six consecutive pitches from Oakland’s Zach Jackson.
Pollock took two straight sliders for a ball, sending the count full at 3-2. On the 11th pitch of the at-bat, Jackson came back with another slider — and he left this one hanging right over the middle of the plate.
Pollock didn’t miss it, sending it over the wall in center field, a 410-foot shot that tied the score at 2-2 with one out in the top of the ninth.
That came a day after Pollock’s eighth-inning home run broke up Oakland’s no-hit bid on Tuesday and provided the spark as the Mariners rallied for a 2-1 victory in the series opener.
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Pollock, a 35-year-old veteran outfielder, came into the series hitting .118 with two home runs in his first season in Seattle.
“It’s been frustrating,” Pollock said Tuesday. “I’ve had some stretches of good at-bats and then nothing (to show for it), and then I’ve had a couple not-so-great at-bats. I’ve just been looking for something to go right. This game can be torturous. You’ve just got to keep working and hopefully you get a chance to do something special for the team. I just wanted to be ready and hopefully take advantage of something.”
For the second night in a row, the Mariners were able to avoid what would have been their most frustrating loss of the season. They are 2-5 in extra-inning games this season.
“Not the prettiest win,” Mariners manager Scott Servais said. “… But hopefully a couple of these late-inning wins will help calm the waters here a little bit.”
After a 66-minute rain delay before the start of Wednesday’s game, the Mariners offense again sputtered against one of Oakland’s young starters, left-hander JP Sears, who threw six shutout innings, scattered four hits and struck out six.
The Mariners have managed zero runs and just four hits across 13 innings against Oakland’s two starters. Rookie right-hander Mason Miller tossed seven no-hit innings on Tuesday before the A’s bullpen coughed up the late lead.
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Making matters worse for the Mariners’ offense on Wednesday: Jarred Kelenic, their most valuable hitter through the first month, was ejected in the sixth inning after striking out swinging at a slider. As he turned toward the dugout, Kelenic said something he shouldn’t have to home-plate umpire Nestor Ceja, who quickly ejected Kelenic.
“There are certain things you can’t say to the umpire,” Servais said. “And, unfortunately, when you say things and there aren’t too many people in the stands, they hear everything. And that’s what happened.”
Mariners star Julio Rodriguez, after sitting out the last three games because of a sore back, was 0 for 4 with a walk in his return to the lineup as the designated hitter. He’s hitting .231 with a .724 OPS.
The top of the Mariners’ lineup wasted prime scoring opportunities in the third and fifth innings.
With Crawford at third and Jose Caballero at second, and no outs, Sears struck out Rodriguez and Ty France, then got Kelenic to fly out to end the threat, keeping the game scoreless.
In the fifth, with Crawford at second and Caballero at first, Rodriguez struck out again and France grounded into an inning-ending 5-4-3 double play.
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“Our situational hitting early in the ballgame — not good at all,” Servais said, adding: “We all know where the short-comings are at, and we’ve just got to keep grinding.”
Logan Gilbert gave the Mariners a quality start, allowing just three hits and two runs in six innings. He struck out six and walked two on 89 pitches.
Gilbert retired the A’s in order through three innings.
“Logan threw the ball really well tonight,” Servais said. “The curveball, I thought, was awesome.”
The A’s finally got to Gilbert in the sixth inning.
Ryan Noda drew a leadoff walk and scored the game’s first run on a Esteury Ruiz double.
Ruiz scored on a Tony Kemp double to make it 2-0.
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The Mariners finally scored in the seventh inning. Pollock doubled with one out and scored on Caballero’s two-out single, cutting the Mariners’ deficit to 2-1.
Caballero, the rookie second baseman, was 3 for 5 in the first multi-hit game of his career.
“This feels like Mariners baseball,” Gilbert said of the second straight late rally. “This is kind of our identity.”
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Source: The Seattle Times
