Logan’s cut and Logan’s run: Gilbert shows off bigger arsenal as Mariners fall to Diamondbacks 5-4

New pitch, who dis?

Yesterday morning, Jeff Reid arrived in Nome, Alaska with six of the sixteen dogs he’d left Anchorage with two weeks ago. After 12 days, 11 hours, 22 minutes and one second on the trail, he was the last musher to finish the 2024 Iditarod, taking about three and a half days longer than this year’s winner, Dallas Seavey. But at tonight’s awards banquet, Reid will be given the Red Lantern award. The Red Lantern is given to the final finisher of the Iditarod each year, not as a mark of shame, but to honor just how impressive it is to complete the race at all. After all, nine of the 38 mushers that started this year’s brutal race through the Alaskan wilderness dropped out along the way. The Red Lantern is one of the best traditions in sports.

It’s in that spirit that I didn’t mind the interminable end to today’s Spring Training tilt between the Mariners and the Diamondbacks as much as I normally would have. The first eight innings basically flew by, but A-baller Juan Burgos took more than 30 pitches to get two outs in the top of the ninth, surrendering three runs and the lead along the way and ultimately needing to be bailed out by Holden Laws. With a thunder storm threatening on the horizon, taking the game to the bottom of the ninth was a risky endeavor. But despite Dakota “Less-Than-Super Nintendo” Chalmers needing about 30 pitches of his own, the game did finally end when Ryan Bliss-Me-I’m-Irish was caught looking on a 3-2 heater down the middle. If you think I’m lying about how long this seemed to drag on, consider that the crowd booed when Arizona’s pitching coach came out for a mound visit after Chalmers gave up two free base runners. (Although I have to say that even setting aside that the Iditarod’s having given me a more generous spirit about this, I find the booing a bizarre choice. You know you can just leave, right?)

It became hard to remember three-plus hours later, but the star of the game was the Never Jolly, Green-Hatted Giant, Logan Gilbert. Facing what was admitedly inferior competition—the Diamondbacks had a split squad today, and this was decidedly their B-game—Gilbert worked his way through Arizona’s lineup like a buzzsaw. His first batter saw five strikes with what I think were five different pitch types, ending with a whiff on a high fastball. Perfect through his first seven batters, Gilbert ended up going five innings with three hits, no walks, and seven strikeouts, ramping his pitch count up to 73.

But more impressive than his line was how he did it, breaking two bats on his sinker, which he’s playing around with again after essentially abandoning it last season. It’s hard to say without Statcast data, but it looked like it got some decent run on it, which is what led to the broken bats. How much of that was the element of surprise though is even harder to say. Under normal circumstances, I’d mention this at the top, but it’s a Lookout Landing recap of a Spring Training game—if you’re clicking at all, you’re getting to the fourth paragraph—but Logan Gilbert was also toying with a cutter! Kate reports from the press box that it was sitting 91-92, which would be a pretty devastating complement to his 89-ish slider. I don’t want to read too much into its success today. The results came against the Diamondbacks’ B-squad, who didn’t even know Logan had a cutter, much less prepare for it. And the underlying metrics will remain a mystery until he throws it in a Statcast-enabled stadium. But I liked what I saw. Whether Logan and the team liked it enough to have him bring those two pitches into the regular season is another thing we’ll have to wait and see on.

Odds and Ends

• The Mariners bats pounced early, just the way you’d want to see. Dylan Moore and Julio walked to lead off the bottom of the first, followed by a Polanco double and a Garver single to give the team an early 2-0 lead.

• Mitch Haniger looked great again today, going down to barrel up a low breaking ball on a full count in the fourth. Seeing that swing at work still brings such a visceral living nostalgia that it earns Haniger today’s Sun Hat Award (the 50th!).
• Samad Taylor had a nice little game. Early, he stayed with a difficult fly ball that easily could have been a sun double. Later, he stole second and aggressively took third on a ball that the catcher kept in front of him, scoring when the catcher threw it away trying to get him at third. And in his last at bat, he put the hustle in a hustle double, allowing him to score easily on a Ryan Bliss single.