Mariners clutch up, clutch tightly to 3-2 comeback victory

On a rare rest night for Cal Raleigh, Seattle ekes out a win thanks to their other stars.

They’re not playing meaningless baseball. Far from it. The Seattle Mariners won their 45th game of 2025 on Wednesday night by a threadbare margin, but I’m told they all count the same when 162 are tallied. With their 3-2 victory over the Kansas City Royals, Seattle stretched their lead on the third and final Wild Card spot to 2.5 games across the board. They gained on the Angels, Guardians, Red Sox, and Yankees, all but the last of whom are among the morass of quasi-contenders lurking just beneath the waves.

But in a game where Cal Raleigh did not play due to rest, and the Houston Astros won once more (albeit tested again by the Colorado Rockies), the behemoths at the root of the voyage remained undetected. Every game cannot be reckoned with in proximity to the finish line, but at present I’m struggling to separate it out.

In spite of my feelings, as ever, the Mariners played on. Logan Gilbert fell in an early hole, crushing pepper and dicing basil with rusted cutlery through four frames and change that saw him atypically inefficient as he worked around the hyper-aggressive Royals lineup. Seven punchouts against three walks and three hits is quite satisfactory, particularly with one run yielded, but in 4.2 frames, the box score is slightly askew for what Gilbert is expected to cook up. Despite being quite hard on himself postgame, LoGi Bert tried to put a tempered spin on things postgame.

“It’s so easy to get frustrated, especially with my standards, so I have to be careful. And just try to look at the positives, and then kind of look with a neutral eye at things to work on without being like, that was bad, this was bad, this was bad, because then you can kind of go down in a dark place. So I just try to take the good and then take the things I need to work on ... I felt pretty good so far this year, but not like it’s my best stuff compared to the end of last year or anything like that. So that stuff, I feel like it comes along the way. You’ve just got to be patient. My execution felt pretty good, they’re just a tough team. They’re going to have tough at-bats, especially at the top half of that order.”

While the Royals have not hit particularly well this season, they have an aggressive approach that is a dangerous foil to Seattle’s medley of strike-throwers.

Fortunately, the bullpen, largely reset after its laborious Texas tribulations, was razor sharp. Yes, tragically, Matt Brash yielded his first earned run of the season in a sloppy 8th inning, but he was able to clench tight to the lead that Gabe Speier and Carlos Vargas made possible with scoreless, stressless showings. Andrés Muñoz arrived to slam the door, and no further fretting festered.

The lead he locked down came about by more... chaotic methods. Randy Arozarena continued his shouldering of star responsibilities, clubbing a John Schreiber slider that simply could not have caught much more of the plate if it tried, squandering the lead young lefty Noah Cameron earned the club through 4.2 frames of his own against the first hitter he was brought in to face. In the bottom of the 7th, Ben Williamson cracked a double and scooted in to third on a sacrifice bunt from J.P. Crawford. For B-Willy, whose big league future seems expected but whose present is under a specter of trade that could pounce at any moment, it was clear the knock, and his deft baserunning, were meaningful.

“Felt really good to get one on a barrel. Felt like it’s been a while ... I felt like I’ve been lacking a little bit on my offensive side in the past couple of weeks. So it felt really good to be dialed in on both sides of the ball.”

A day after strong glovework kept the club in the game, Williamson set the table for Julio Rodríguez, on a night where the trick-or-treat trends of the 24 year old were on full display. He scalded the ball three times, struck out once, but only one time was his contact rewarded with a hit. Fortunately, on Wednesday evening, once was sufficient.

Cole Young, who snuck into third after reaching on a fielder’s choice and moved up initially on Crawford’s bunt, would be the ultimate winning run a play later, as Arozarena again came up big as well, dutifully cracking a sacrifice fly for a 3-1 lead that would halve but not fold. It’s a win they’ve often concocted in recent years, but couldn’t muster for much of May and chunks of June as their pitching faltered. They’ll need each one.