Mariners ride long road to redemption, complete sweep of White Sox with 6-3 win

Its Sweepsmas in July

Dylan Moore is now the longest-tenured Mariner, but on March 30, 2019, he was ten days into his big-league career after having been signed as a minor-league free agent in the offseason. It was a disaster of a start for Moore, who in addition to going 0-for-4 at the plate, committed three straight errors in the ninth inning, allowing three runs to score.

At 30, White Sox veteran Paul DeJong doesn’t have the excuse of being a rookie, but he does have the excuse of having been slid over to the hot corner rather than his natural position of shortstop as the struggling White Sox attempt to showcase some defensive versatility to make DeJong a more appealing trade target—a move that perhaps backfired today, as DeJong had a nightmare third inning that allowed the Mariners to put today’s game out of reach.

Facing lefty Garrett Crochet, the Mariners got off to a hot start early, as Randy Arozarena checked in with yet another infield base hit, setting up Cal Raleigh to continue his stretch of hot hitting:

Obligatory revisit of the Alex Mayer GWS (Game-Winning Stat) from yesterday:

The Mariners tacked on a second run in the second inning when Dylan Moore—for whom that March night in 2019 is just a distant memory—led off by mashing a ground-rule double at 105 mph that Crochet left in the middle of the plate; he’d then steal third base while Crochet was busy walking Mitch Haniger on four pitches. Leo Rivas then battled for eight pitches against the flamethrowing Crochet, managing to avoid an inning-ending double play by beating second baseman Brooks Baldwin’s relay throw to first to put the Mariners up 3-0. The Mariners had an opportunity to bust the game wide open there in the second as Victor Robles and Arozarena both reached on balls that didn’t leave the infield, but Raleigh popped out to end the threat. Still, over two innings the Mariners had consumed about half of Crochet’s pitch count for the day, as he walked off the mound at 45 pitches.

The third inning is where things came apart for Crochet, DeJong and the White Sox. It started off with Jorge Polanco “singling” on a ground ball into left field, although it just as easily could have been ruled an error on DeJong. Two batters later, Dylan Moore hit the same pitch, a cutter at the bottom of the zone, to the same spot, and once again DeJong couldn’t handle it, putting two on with one out; DMo and Polanco then executed a double steal against the struggling Crochet.

Something something definition of insanity. Crochet then tried the same pitch against Mitch Haniger, with, you guessed it, the exact same result, this time with the ball skipping right past DeJong into left field and allowing both runs to score, making the game 5-0. A wholly pissed-off Crochet then took out his frustrations on poor Tyler Locklear and Leo Rivas, dismantling them with 100-mph fastballs neither probably saw the likes of in Triple-A. The damage was done, however, and Crochet—whose pitch count is being managed carefully by the White Sox, partially for player health and perhaps to protect his trade value—was done after just three innings of work, a far cry from when he shoved against the Mariners back in June, striking out 13.

Bryce Miller, staked to a comfortable lead early, was efficient against the White Sox despite getting hit in the heel hard with a comebacker off the bat of Eloy Jímenez in the second inning. Miller took a long injury delay after taking the 111 mph bullet off his foot, walking around the infield and testing it out. He stayed in—thanks to Andrew Benintendi for immediately grounding into an inning-ending double play on the next pitch—and gave the Mariners six-plus innings despite his skipper noting postgame that Bryce was “not at 100% today,” adding: “He sucked it up.”

As for Miller, he downplayed the injury, saying postgame, “it hurt for a couple minutes, but I was a’ight.” There was a moment of concern in the third inning as the White Sox attempted an answer-back inning; Miller got the first two outs quickly but then suffered some bad batted-ball luck as the White Sox got back-to-back, weakly-hit ground-ball singles off the bats of Nicky Lopez and Korey Lee, followed by a harder-hit (but still on the ground) single from Tommy Pham to score the White Sox’s first run of the day. Miller rebounded to get Luis Robert Jr. to fly out on a sweeper off the plate; Robert would again be held hitless in this game, making him 0-for-11 with eight strikeouts (and one walk) over this series. Someone free this man from the scourge of the Chicago White Sox (not you, Houston).

Injury-inflected or not, Miller didn’t have a handle on his splitter today, although it improved as he went along as he got more swings on the pitch thanks to some better location. What he did have was his new curveball, which looked about as good as it has as Miller busted it out in the sixth inning, getting all three strikeouts on the curve.

However, as Dylan Moore knows, baseball is a game that will give you second chances at redemption. The White Sox were able to tack on another two runs in the seventh when the beleaguered DeJong battled Bryce Miller, on again in the seventh, for an eight-pitch at-bat that ended in a two-run homer when Miller let his 88th and final fastball of the day leak into the middle of the plate, cutting the Mariners’ lead in half. Austin Voth came in and struck out Brooks Baldwin on a curveball and got Korey Lee, in a two-strike count, to fly out to end the inning.

Yimi García, making back-to-back appearances, had the eighth and got his three outs so quickly that Victor Robles had to make the catch for the second out of the inning with his positioning card stuffed in his mouth. And a good thing, too, because the rain was coming down in buckets by this point, dampening the Mariners’ hot bats—although the eight home runs they hit in this series was a welcome change from their power outage of late.

Andrés Muñoz got the first two outs of the ninth inning before walking Andrew Benintendi, bringing up...of course, Paul DeJong. In a 1-2 count, Muñoz threw a slider that wound up in the middle of the plate. DeJong was late on it, though, popping it up weakly to the Mariners’ trade deadline acquisition Randy Arozarena, who tucked the ball in his glove and went off to join in the victory dance he just learned. Sometimes the redemption doesn’t come right away.