Mariners maintain tradition against the Blue Jays, lose 6-3

Death, taxes, opening series losses

Today marks the anniversary of the Mariners and the Blue Jays playing for the first time when both teams entered the league as expansion teams in 1977. The Mariners would go on to lose that game 10-4. Not being ones to break with tradition, the Mariners decided to lose today's game 6-3. Luis Castillo started today's game and, in his own way, honored his personal history against the Blue Jays by giving up five earned runs, keeping in line with his career 3.95 ERA against the Toronto-based team.

The day got off to an inauspicious start when Castillo walked the first two batters of the ball game. Though he followed that up with a strikeout, it was on a 93 mph four-seam fastball, a bad omen to say the least. Addison Barger, the Bellevue native, started the action for the Blue Jays when he slapped a two-run double down the first base line to score the game's first two runs.

The action didn’t stop there for Barger; in the top of the third, he hit another double to the gap with two outs in the inning. A single from Ernie Clement brought him around to score.

Nathan Lukes would follow that up with a two-run bomb to right field to put the Blue Jays up 5-0.

That was where Castillo was able to cap the damage, though, on a night when he didn’t have his best stuff.

“‘Rock’ is such a competitor,” said Wilson postgame. “He goes out there and he takes the ball, and he did have a long inning that first inning, but he competes, and he certainly competed tonight. He gave us a chance.”

Though Castillo would remain untouched for the rest of the game, Dan Wilson released the white smoke and called on Gonzaga product Casey Legumina from the bullpen for the 6th. Castillo finished with five earned runs, two walks, and three strikeouts over five innings. Legumina, meanwhile, had maybe his best outing as a Mariner. Legumina absolutely dominated the middle of the Blue Jays’ order, six up and six down over two innings, with three strikeouts, including strikeouts of Vlad Jr and Daulton Varsho. He had the Blue Jays looking like dogs at the park - chasing frisbees, that is. The 27-year-old righty has appeared in 10 games so far this season for the Mariners and is looking to make the most of his opportunities with the club. He seemed to have it all working today against the team that attempted to draft him back in 2016.

“‘Legs’ is throwing the ball very well,” said Wilson. “He’s really in attack mode when he’s out there, and you can see that from the first pitch. He had some good sweepers today and he was just attacking. He looked very comfortable and confident out there today.”

The Mariners would scrape one back in the third off of Gausman. Despite two quick outs, Ben Williamson kept his modest hitting streak alive with a single up the middle to extend the inning. J.P. Crawford would follow that up with a single of his own to extend his hitting streak to a career-high 16 games. Finally, a single from Polanco would bring Williamson around and put the Mariners on the board.

Gausman would settle in quite nicely for the next few innings as he allowed his defense to play well behind him. Despite many a hard-hit ball, the Blue Jays refused to allow the Mariners to get any hits, capped by this robbed home run by Daulton Varsho in the 5th, again snatching a hard-hit ball away from Williamson:

However, the dam would not hold forever. Going through the lineup for the third time, Gausman finally started to show some cracks. With one out in the bottom of the sixth, Julio hit a single, followed by a messy infield single for Cal on an ugly swing to put men on first and second. Randy Arozarena would step to the plate and drive a hard single up the middle to bring Julio around to score, putting the Mariners down 5-2 and adding to his 31-game on-base streak.

This would drive Gausman from the game with a final line of 5.1 innings, three strikeouts, and two earned runs. The Blue Jays brought in Brendon Little to stop the bleeding, and he got Solano, who pinch-hit for Tellez, swinging. However, Little didn’t get out of the inning unscathed. Leody Taveras lined a double into left center to bring around Raleigh to score and put Arozarena on third.

Little, though, maintained his composure and struck out Dylan Moore to end the inning.

Not to be outdone, Collin Snider came in for the top of the 8th and kept the Blue Jays off balance with a nice slider of his own. Despite another double to Barger, Snider shut down the Blue Jays in the inning with strikeouts of Clement and Lukes.

One-time Mariner Yimi García came in to face the top of the order in the bottom of the 8th. Julio got the inning started with a nice single, followed by a walk to Cal. A wild pitch to Randy Arozarena allowed everyone to move up one, and Randy's subsequent walk loaded the bases, and he was pinch ran for with Leo Rivas. Up to the plate stepped Miles Mastrobouni. After working a 3-1 count, he hit a hard liner to first that Vlady initially couldn’t handle, but he was able to recover and get the force out at home, though the bases remained juiced. Leody Tavares was unable to keep up with Garcia, who overpowered him with a fastball up in the zone to strike him out. Dylan Moore could not come up with the late-game heroics as he has in the past and went down swinging on a slider over the middle to end the inning, and the Mariners’ hopes.

Troy Taylor came on to hold the Blue Jays in the top of the 9th, but things didn’t go quite to plan. Tyler Heineman singled to right on a broken bat, but was nearly thrown out at first by Tavares because he didn’t even realize the ball was in play. A sac bunt from the other side of the Yimi García trade, Jonatan Clase, sent Heineman over the 2nd with one out. Vladdy followed that up with a single, and finally a sac fly from Varsho brought Heineman around to score, putting the Blue Jays up 6-3.

Jeff Hoffman came in for the 9th and slammed the door for the save. Mariners lose 6-3. Tough scenes. Barger really did most of the damage against the Mariners today, with three doubles: his first career game with multiple doubles, and his first career game with three extra-base hits in a single game.

Speaking of Washington natives terrorizing their hometowns, Swerve Strickland!

Now that I’m past the clumsy transition, I can talk about something far more interesting than the game we just suffered through: All Elite Wrestling! (Yeah, all you AEW fans, I’m calling you out.)

Currently the AEW World Championship is being held in the clutches of the hated Jon Moxly (Dean Ambrose for you lapsed fans), who has cheated and bullied his way to maintain his current title run with the support of the Death Riders, the faction he leads. Swerve, a Seattle native, seemed set to seize the belt from Moxley for his second reign at AEW Dynasty this past April. However, it was not to be. Just when it looked like Swerve had him beat, the match was interrupted by none other then the returning Executive Vice Presidents of AEW, The Young Bucks (Mathew and Nicholas Jackson.) Attacking Swerve from behind while the ref was distracted, Moxley was able to turn the match back in his favor and retain the belt, much to my disappointment. Many people have defended or come around on this decision, and it seems Mox will hang on to the belt until AEW's big show, All In Texas, in July. I disagree. This was the perfect chance for AEW to drop the Death Riders storyline, which has been mainly floundering, and put the belt back on one of their hottest acts, leading into what is likely their biggest show in the United States ever. Moreover, All In would be the perfect spot for Swerve to lose the belt again, not only do you now create the narrative that Swerve isn’t capable of winning or defending the belt on the biggest stage in AEW, a narrative you can use in future storylines.

On top of that, I would have Swerve lose to none other than Hangman Adam Page at All in, the Sad Cowboy himself. Hangman and Swerve have had so many great matches in AEW already, including a great match at AEW Full Gear, which I highly recommend you watch. I believe it’s available on HBO Max. But this match at All In would have been the culmination of a few years of bad blood between the two and the perfect spot for Page to finally get his first win over Swerve, and take the belt off of him to boot.

Now, I’m not so into wrestling that I’ve booked the next feuds and who Page would lose the belt to. But I have come up with an order that I think would be a series of great title reigns and TV. The order should be as follows:

Swerve > Hangman > Ospray > Okada > Omega > MJF > Jay White > Darby Allen > Nick Wayne

I think all the non-wrestling fans have tuned out by now, so I’m not going to go in-depth about why I think it should happen this way, but I would be delighted to discuss it in the comments (please). It’ll be a lot more fun than talking about this game, which the Mariners will hope to flush and move on from as quickly as possible.