Mitch Haniger does it all, Mariners go bullpening to win season series vs. reigning World Series champs
The Seattle Mariners won the season series against the Houston Astros, taking their final meeting of the year against the reigning World Series champions.
The Mariners are all but officially out of the playoff chase, but they can at least take that nugget into the offseason, and they’ll watch the Astros in the playoffs knowing they went bullpening and handed Houston a 9-0 loss on Wednesday.
The Mariners (84-68) got home runs from Mitch Haniger, Kyle Seager and Guillermo Heredia, two Robinson Cano doubles and a combination of pitchers Matt Festa, Casey Lawrence, Adam Warren, Shawn Armstrong, Zach Duke, Justin Grimm and Roenis Elias combined for the shutout.
Now Seattle is two wins from tying the most they’ve had in this Jerry Dipoto-Scott Servais era.
But that’s all just finding lights in a time that the Mariners are increasingly coming to grips with a 17th consecutive season without a trip to the playoffs. With the win, the Mariners pulled to 6½ games back of the Athletics with 10 games to go.
If only this offense showed up throughout July and August.
“To be completely honest, yes, it’s tough,” Servais told reporters afterward. “I think that was the frustrating thing going through the struggles we did in August and early September is that we knew it was in there. It just wasn’t consistently showing up and the lineup wasn’t flowing.”
But a runaway win against the Astros, and a win without needing Edwin Diaz to close it out is rare for the Mariners. This is the first time they’ve won more games than they’ve lost in a season against Houston since 2014.
And they went 7-2 at Minute Maid Park this year.
“That’s a good ball club with good arms and a good lineup,” Haniger said. “We just want to play them tough and we feel we match up with them. You want to take every series, but it always feels good beating them.”
They officially ruined Diaz’s chance at a save opportunity on Haniger’s stunning slide into home plate.
It was a thing of beauty. Haniger was a sure out as he rounded third base on his way from first on Cano’s shot to the left-center field gap.
But Haniger avoided the tag when he pulled his left arm in. He passed the plate, but doubled back and quickly touched it before Astros catcher Martin Maldonado knew what happened.
So the Mariners had a 4-0 lead.
Nelson Cruz made it 5-0 when he broke a 1-for-10 slide with a hard single off the right-field wall to score Cano from third.
That, for the Mariners, finally got them something off of Dallas Keuchel after looking like they might run away against the former American League Cy Young winner in the first inning.
It was a three-run opening frame against him when Seager shot a line drive that connected with the back of Keuchel’s head. It was traveling at a 99-mph exit velocity and hit off Keuchel so hard that it landed in the grass in shallow right field off the ricochet.
Seager was at first base, pointing to his head and asking Keuchel if he was hit there and if he was OK. Keuchel nodded, smiled and kept pitching – retiring the next 12 batters he faced.
“That scared me pretty bad,” Seager said. “I couldn’t tell if his glove touched it first or not, but you could definitely hear the thud. It was terrible. Thankfully he was OK.”
That was after Haniger led off with a single, Jean Segura doubled and Cano hit an RBI single for the Mariners’ first run. Segura later scored on a wild pitch before Seager’s comebacker.
But that shot at Keuchel wasn’t Seager’s hardest-hit ball.
He hit his 22nd home run of the season when he got ahold of a middle-of-the plate fastball from Brad Peacock in the sixth inning. It traveled 417 feet to the second deck in right field for a 6-0 Mariners lead.
A Haniger homer made it 7-0 in the seventh and Guillermo Heredia’s in the eighth, his fifth home run of the season, made it 9-0 after another Cano RBI double.
A night after the Mariners were 0-for-9 with runners in scoring position and left 10 runners on base in a 7-0 loss to the Astros, they had nine runs on 11 hits in this one, with Cano recording three hits for the second consecutive night.
“I think a few of our guys get energized here for whatever reason,” Servais said. “Maybe that’s because they won the World Series last year and they’ve had our number the past couple years.
“Our goal was to play better this year against them and we did that.”
Let’s get to it. Three takeaways:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-partner="tweetdeck"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Tag, you're ... oh <a href="https://t.co/IX7XJOrSC3">https://t.co/IX7XJOrSC3</a></p>— TJ Cotterill (@TJCotterill) <a href="https://twitter.com/TJCotterill/status/1042589946236743680?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 20, 2018</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The slide
Mitch Haniger runs the bases about as well as he hits, fields, throws and avoids desserts.
If you didn’t get a chance to see, go look at Haniger’s dive into home plate in the top of the fifth inning.
He was dead to rights on his way in from third base, but just as he was about to be tagged on his left arm, he pulled it back, avoided the tag, then hurried back to the plate to tag it after he passed it by.
Safe. And the Mariners took a 4-0 lead.
“I couldn’t get my hand in,” Haniger said. “Luckily I snuck back in.”
That was even more fancy than the slide he had to just get the plate in what was the go-ahead run to beat the Yankees on Sept. 9.
Oh, and Haniger added his 26th home run of the season with a seventh-inning shot to left field, too. That’s 10 more homers than he had his rookie season a year ago.
Haniger scored three runs and his homer gives him 90 RBI for the season (Nelson Cruz also has 90 RBI.
“It’s an amazing season he’s had,” Servais said. “What an unbelievable slide. Some kind of athlete he is, and he’s done it as consistently as any player I’ve seen since he’s been here.”
The opener
Matt Festa made his first career big-league start.
Well, it goes down in the official books as a start. The 25-year-old rookie out of Staten Island, New York, pitched a 1-2-3 first inning as the Mariners’ “opener,” which is kind of like a closer but the pitcher just tosses the first inning or two of the game before transitioning the game to the actual “starter.”
It’s a tactic used increasingly in baseball this year, especially by the Tampa Bay Rays, and allows a starter to ease into a game by not having to face the top of the opposing team’s lineup in the first inning. They can enter against more toward the bottom of the order.
So Festa, the Mariners’ seventh-round pick in 2016, gave way to right-hander Casey Lawrence after the first inning. This is the second time the Mariners have done this, but the last was when Nick Vincent opened against the Astros and pitched two innings in a 3-2 Mariners loss on Aug. 21.
“I think Festa, the young guy running out there for the firs tinning, he handled it great,” Servais said. “Casey Lawrence threw the ball really good. He does a great job preparing, even though he hasn’t pitched in a while, he’s up on the mound, he’s getting his work in, and he’s getting ready. And the guys after him threw the ball really well.”
The series
The Mariners won 10 games against the Houston Astros this year and lost nine of them.
Against the American League West, the Mariners are either leading or currently tied with the four other division rivals. They beat the Angels, 11-8, and are leading the Athletics, 9-7, with three games to play.
All their remaining 10 games are against division opponents. Besides those three against the A’s, they have seven remaining against the Rangers and are 6-6 against Texas this year.
You’d think that would be a good recipe for a playoff berth.
Except the Mariners stunk in interleague play – a 6-14 record against the Diamondbacks (2-1), Rockies (1-5), Dodgers (1-2), Padres (0-4) and Giants (2-2). They also went 1-5 against the Yankees, 3-4 against the Blue Jays and 3-4 against the Red Sox.
Against AL Central teams (White Sox, Indians, Tigers, Royals and Twins), the Mariners went 23-9.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-partner="tweetdeck"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">"My name is Mitch and I like to party." <a href="https://t.co/TkF4rqw8jH">pic.twitter.com/TkF4rqw8jH</a></p>— Seattle Mariners (@Mariners) <a href="https://twitter.com/Mariners/status/1042599631467642880?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 20, 2018</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-partner="tweetdeck"><p lang="es" dir="ltr">¡BOMBAZO de Kyle Seager!<br>Este es su 22do jonrón de la temporada.<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/LosMarineros?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#LosMarineros</a> <a href="https://t.co/XCaQNUIFKi">pic.twitter.com/XCaQNUIFKi</a></p>— Marineros de Seattle (@LosMarineros) <a href="https://twitter.com/LosMarineros/status/1042595256330534912?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 20, 2018</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
This story was originally published September 19, 2018 at 7:59 PM.