Jesse Winker’s extra-inning walk-off clinches series sweep over Royals, Mariners win 5-4
When Jesse Winker moved into his childhood home in Florida, a batting cage was set up in the backyard before family members could furnish the interior.
Each day, Winker joined his brothers for hitting practice, their father serving as the family pitcher. These weren’t batting-practice-like soft tosses, but actual, game-like pitches that challenged the Winker brothers, he told reporters Sunday.
If the boys made hard contact or hit a home run, their father congratulated them. But nothing generated a reaction out of the eldest Winker more than when someone swung at a pitch well outside of the strike zone.
“Wait for your pitch,” Winker’s father would tell him and his brothers.
The message was drilled into Winker’s mind. He made it a goal to remember, particularly at the highest level, and in the biggest moments.
One of those opportunities came Sunday. Winker stood in the batter’s box with a chance to drive in the game’s winning run in the 12th inning. He waited, pitch after pitch, until the eleventh offering of his at-bat: a 3-2 breaking ball that hung over the plate.
Winker slapped the ball into shallow right field, breaking his bat. The single scored extra-inning ghost-runner Adam Frazier from second base, clinching both a win and series sweep over the Kansas City Royals, 5-4.
Once Winker had touched first base, he turned to watch Frazier cross home. Then, he ran to the outfield in jubilation. Teammates met him in the grass, circling and jumping around him in front of some 28,000 fans at T-Mobile Park who waited more than four hours to watch a Seattle victory. Acting manager Kristopher Negron interrupted Winker’s on-field interview with a Gatorade bath outside the home dugout.
“It’s baseball,” Winker said. “These stretches are going to happen. Hopefully they happen for 12 more years, because that means I must be doing something right on the flip side. It’s just one of those things (where) you keep going out there, you keep being competitive, and you don’t give anything away.”
Earlier in extras, Winker worked an 11-pitch sacrifice fly to tie the game at four. And his average, now at .154, doesn’t tell the entire story of his season, manager Scott Servais said on Tuesday. His 15 walks lead the American League, and throughout the season’s opening week, Winker swung at just one pitch outside of the strike zone: a slider offered by White Sox lefty Aaron Bummer.
“I want to be the one hitting,” Winker said. “I don’t want to give it away. I don’t want to give it up. I don’t want to give the pitcher anything. These (pitchers) are good, they’re talented, and I feel like I’ve been putting good swings on balls and hitting balls right at guys. In those last two at-bats, I was like, ‘I want to drive this run in. I didn’t want to get out.’ Today, it went in my favor.”
On Saturday, the Mariners scored 13 runs. A day later, they wasted no time picking up where they left off. Adam Frazier whacked a line-drive single up the middle on the first pitch Seattle’s offense saw, and Ty France drove him in with a line-drive home run to left field that gave the Mariners an immediate 2-0 lead.
Robbie Ray pitched six innings of two-run ball, and France, who had five hits Saturday, tacked on three more. Seattle finished their nine-game home stand at 7-2, and they’re a full game ahead of the Los Angeles Angels for first place in the American League West.
“I think we’re a very good baseball team,” Winker added. “It’s a fun team. Great clubhouse atmosphere. So far, this is the best team I’ve been a part of and the most fun I’ve had in my career. I’m really enjoying Seattle.”
Ray generated 13 swing-and-misses – eight on his slider – and struck out five while walking only one. His fastball topped out at 94 miles per hour, nearly two ticks above his season average of 92.1.
In the sixth, Ray induced an inning-ending double play that kept the score tied, and celebrated with a fist pump on his way back to the dugout.
His final line: six innings, five hits, two runs (both earned), one walk, and five strikeouts.
“I’m trying to get into the sixth, seventh, eighth inning every night,” Ray said. “My slider felt really good today. … My tempo, I feel like, was a lot better in those last three innings. I (felt) like stuff was coming out sharper.”
Kansas City tied the game at two in the third inning after a pair of run-scoring doubles from Cam Gallagher and Salvador Perez.
Seattle reclaimed the lead, 3-2, when J.P. Crawford lined a sixth-inning double into the left-center gap, scoring Eugenio Suarez.
Matt Festa and Erik Swanson each posted a scoreless inning of relief, but the Royals would tie the game in the ninth inning on a solo home run from Hunter Dozier. Seattle’s Drew Steckenrider, in for the save opportunity, left a fastball over the heart of the plate, and Dozier did not miss.
In extras, Andrew Benintendi scored Kansas City’s ghost-runner in the 10th. Winker’s sacrifice fly tied the game at four in the bottom half of the frame. Both clubs were held scoreless in the eleventh, and Winker broke the tie with his 12th-inning single.
Seattle reliever Yohan Ramirez escaped a bases-loaded jam in the top of the 12th after striking out Whit Merrifield and Nicky Lopez.
“I don’t pay attention to (luck turning),” Winker said on Saturday. “I just try to hit the ball hard and string together good at-bats.”
This story was originally published April 24, 2022 at 7:26 PM.
