Mariners have Jazz Age fever dream, beat New York 5-4

The Mariners play like Fitzgerald’s stories, but with less murder

Summer in New York City always makes me think of the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and tonight’s Yankees game was no exception.

The first six-and-a-half innings were a lot like This Side of Paradise—a total snoozefest with a loathsome main character. Marcus Stroman held the Mariners bats almost entirely in check, but without dominating enough to be interesting, and Luke Raley got a second-inning hit that zapped the game of the tension of a potential no-hitter. But Stroman skated through the lineup with an almost evenly divided five-pitch mix that kept Seattle’s bats off balance enough to prevent a breakthrough, even as they made some decent contact and avoided the swing-and-miss that’s defined so much of their early season.

On the other side, Logan Gilbert was not as sharp as usual, so he got hit a little hard, but he executed in the tightest spots, resulting in a couple timely double plays. But the Volpe-Soto-Judge-Verdugo top of the lineup strung things together a couple times to tally up three runs.

The next nine outs were more like The Beautiful and Damned—a cautionary tale about hubris among the privileged. Fans on both sides felt like the Yankees’ three runs were insurmountable. The Evil Empire had won seven in a row and had a lockdown bullpen that would surely contain the sad sack Mariners. So when Kirby Snead took over for Gilbert in the bottom of the seventh and loaded the bases with one out, Scott Servais could have left him in there to eat it and try again tomorrow. But a three-run lead just isn’t enough in Yankee Stadium, so Servais pulled Snead for Eduard Bazardo, who got the ground ball for the inning-ending double play. As the inning turned over, Dominic Canzone hit a 426-foot Bronx blast to cut the deficit to two and remind everyone that a win was possible.

When the Yanks got that run back again in the bottom half and called in Clay Holmes to close it out, both fanbases once again felt like it was over. Like The Beautiful and Damned’s central couple, though, the Yankees were ultimately done in by their embrace of hedonism without realizing it. Throwing caution to the wind, they tried to steal second base in both the seventh and eighth innings, costing them precious outs that they didn’t realize they couldn’t afford to lose. A special shout out here to Andy Bissell for telling Scott to challenge both initial erroneous safe calls.

With the Mariners having prevented the game from getting out of hand, things finally got like The Great Gatsby. We’re supposed to think of Gatsby’s parties as hollow, a metaphor for the emptiness in striving for wealth that can’t bring happiness. But the thing is, the whole book doesn’t work if Gatsby’s parties don’t sound like a lot of fun. And the top of the ninth was a lot of fun.

Josh Rojas went down, as you’d expect anyone facing Clay Holmes to do. But that brought up the Mariners fledgling superstar. Julio hadn’t had anything to show for it yet, but he’d had a good night process-wise, twice putting balls in the air at over 99 mph. And as it’s gone all year, where power has failed Julio this year, he’s still gotten it done with his speed, and tonight that meant legging out an infield hit. The entire middle of the lineup then delivered uninterrupted, with one big plate appearance after another.

Cal Raleigh, despite having three strikeouts to his name, built on the momentum of having caught those two baserunners and worked a walk. Raley made it his second three-hit game in a row. Haniger got his bat to a sweeper well off the plate, and DMo walked after laying off some very close pitches. Canzone hit another ball in the air, and though this one was caught, it was deep enough to get the run in and tie the game. Finally, Ty France got some unusual luck on a hard hit ball to bring in the go-ahead run and complete the comeback.

But the Mariners were not out of the woods yet. With Volpe, Soto, Judge, and potentially Verdugo due up in the bottom of the ninth, Seattle needed their final act to be close to flawless. And just like Fitzgerald did with his final work, Tender Is the Night, the Mariners pulled it off. After a lights out 2022, Andrés Muñoz never quite got locked in last season. But after a shaky first few outings, Muñoz appears to be back. Although he allowed a base hit to Soto, he struck out both Volpe and Judge on a couple of the nastiest pitches you’ll see and secured the win with a weak ground ball from Verdugo. That also secured him tonight’s Sun Hat Award for individual contribution to a Mariners game.

If the Mariners can keep this kind of thing up, they’ll start next season by distributing rings complete with diamonds as big as the Ritz.