Mariners complete sweep with 6-1 win over San Diego
Seattle takes a decisive lead in the first official Vedder Cup
Today’s game against the Padres got off to an inauspicious start. The first four at-bats went as follows: J.P. Crawford strikes out; Cal Raleigh strikes out; Julio Rodriguez pops out; Fernando Tatis, Jr. hits a home run. Things didn’t get a lot better over the next hour. The Padres collected another three hits off Bryan Woo. The Mariners struck out another three times to Michael King. The booth continued their bit from last night and gave a very hard time to the beleaguered Brad Adam. But come the hour mark, the Mariners, sick of the franchise fondness for 1995, found a little of the 2001 magic, and put together a little Two Outs? So What.
With two outs in the fourth, Randy Arozarena tied the game at 1-1 by yanking a ball into the left field seats at an exit velocity that looked much faster than the 107 it was clocked at. Rowdy Tellez followed that up by coming just shy of homering for the third game of the series, but settled for a double off the top of the wall. Mitch Garver kept the hits coming, though his in the form of a much less convincing swinging bunt. With runners at the corners, Leody Taveras picked a good time for his second extra-base hit as a Mariner, hitting a ground-rule double to score Rowdy and make it 2-1. Conceivably, Garver could have scored from first if the ball hadn’t gone out of play, but with Tatis defending the play, I think this actually saved the Mariners from themselves. Garver ended up scoring anyway on a soft line drive from Master Bunny that ticked off King’s glove and completely died in the middle of the infield. And just like that, the Mariners had flipped it from 1-0 Padres to 3-1 Seattle, all with two outs.
A lesson more teams should learn is that you should never let the Mariners give Bryan Woo a lead because dude will lock the F in. After getting staked a 3-1 lead, Woo was unhittable, with a combination of soft contact and strikeouts that have been his calling card. The Padres’ average exit velocity off him today was just 83.7 mph. For a sense of scale, in the entire Statcast era, a qualified hitter has averaged less than 83.7-mph EV just 14 times. In a sample of 1,539. As for the strikeouts, Woo racked up five today. Facing the contact-heavy Padres, he went to his secondaries a bit more today, especially his slider, which was really working. Check out this pantsing of future Hall of Famer Manny Machado:
Three straight sliders, three straight whiffs, the last one barely a wave at a pitch about a foot off the plate. It was part of back-to-back nine-pitch fifth and sixth innings that allowed today’s Sun Hat Award winner to get through seven, giving up just the one run to five strikeouts and no walks. Woo has now pitched at least six innings in 17 of his last 20 outings. That stretch, which dates back to the beginning of last August, is what I think we can officially call Bryan Woo’s coming out party. Over that time, he has pitched 125.1 innings with a 3.02 ERA and 0.886 WHIP while striking out 24.5% of hitters and walking just 3.1% of them. #SendWoo
By contrast, his counterpart could not make it through seven today. King got chased after Arozarena reached on a rare error by Tatis (who showed impressive range but then bobbled the ball while trying to make a flashy basket catch), moved up to third on a very aggressive tag, and scored when Garver doubled on the ninth pitch of his at-bat. That marks the 44th time in the Mariners’ 45 games that an opposing starter has failed to get through seven innings. It was announced today that the one pitcher to do it, the Astros’ Hayden Wesneski, will be undergoing Tommy John surgery. Only one guy could pitch seven innings against the 2025 Mariners, and it killed him.
As the game wound down, Carlos Vargas gave us a scare in the bottom of the eighth by letting the 8 and 9 hitters reach with no outs for Tatis-Arraez-Machado. But we quickly calmed down when Tatis grounded into a rare double play and Arraez sent a soft fly right to Julio.
That was really nothing compared to the Padres’ Yuki Matsui, who started the next half inning by walking the bases loaded for Cal-Julio-Arozarena. But San Diego just went ahead and pulled him for Alek Jacob. But where the Padres wasted their opportunity, Cal and Julio drove in the Mariners fifth and sixth runs.
With the score 6-1, the Mariners could go to Eduard Bazardo for the bottom of the ninth instead of Andrés Muñoz. That inning got off to an inauspicious start, with a pair of walks and zero command evident from Bazardo. But just like the game as a whole, the bottom of the ninth started out a little shaky but was ultimately fine.
If you’ve forgotten how you were feeling on Thursday, the Mariners just had a 1-5 homestand, put their third frontline starter on the IL, and then left for a ten-game, no-off-day road trip. Starting that road trip by sweeping the Padres by a combined score of 15-3 will do a lot for the vibes.