The Mariners figured they’re better off jogging around the bases instead.
The Mariners won 5-3 in Houston on Friday in a back-and-forth game that featured questionable base running, a few clutch moments, and homers in a variety of shapes and sizes. The lineup collected five walks, 10 hits, including three homers, and the bullpen shut the door following a solid performance from Emerson Hancock. The win pushes the Mariners to 3.5 games above the Astros for first place in the AL West at the 50-game mark.
Leody Taveras picked up three hits in a (mostly) great evening for the Mariners newest right fielder. Leading off top of the third, Taveras lasered a middle-middle fastball from Ryan Gusto off the facing of the upper deck in right field to open the scoring. It’s his fourth extra base hit and second homer in the last six games.
Taveras struggled to begin the season, posting a 66 wRC+ for the Rangers before being let go in early May. He then posted a -7 wRC+ in his first 32 plate appearances with the Mariners. Davy Andrews at Fangraphs on Thursday pointed out Taveras has a bit of an outlier swing and not necessarily in a good way. The angle his bat takes to the ball is conducive to whiffs, pop ups, and weak contact. But Taveras’ swing metrics look quite different over the last week, with a noticeable uptick in bat speed, which could suggest improved mechanics and timing. It’s unclear whether it’s a small sample blip or represents a meaningful change, but batting coach Bobby Magallanes seemed quite pleased with what he saw on Taveras’ homer, giving him a big hug at the end of the high five line in the dugout. Taveras has a 1.071 OPS over the last six games.
Taveras’ second hit on Friday was timely but for naught. Down 3-2 in the sixth, Cal Raleigh singled to leadoff the inning and Dylan Moore later walked to put runners on first and second with one out. Taveras went out of the zone and poked a soft line drive the other way to left field. Third base coach Kristopher Negrón waved Cal home, and he was thrown out by several steps.
The ball was hit to Jose Altuve in left field, who has the weakest arm among MLB outfielders at 79.9 mph on average. On the one hand, it might make sense to test Altuve’s arm with the very bottom of the order coming up. On the other, the ball was quite shallow (Savant shows it landed 259 feet from home) and hit directly at Altuve, and Cal is among the slowest runners in MLB. It’s easy to second guess base running decisions in hindsight, but the Mariners have not run the bases well this year. They came into the game second to last in MLB by BsR and third to last in runs via extra bases taken. Taveras did not help this cause when he was picked off in the eighth inning after his third hit of the night.
But base running isn’t necessary when you can hit dingers. And with three home runs on the day, the Mariners are up to 70 on the year, sixth most in MLB. The most dramatic of the homers came in the seventh. Still down 3-2, J.P. Crawford dropped a flare single into left, and Julio laced a two-out double into the right field corner, scoring Crawford from first to tie the game. (I should point out this was a good send from Negrón on a close play at the plate.) Cal then yanked a 112 mph, 41 degree moon shot off the top of the fair pole to push the Mariners ahead 5-3, a lead they would not give up. It was Cal’s 17th home run on the 50th game of the year, which is tied with Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani and Kyle Schwarber for the most in MLB.
Hancock got the start for the Mariners and was fine. The velocity bump he saw in his last start remained, with a 95.5 mph average fastball that topped out at 97.4 mph. The boost in stuff didn’t translate to much swing-and-miss — six whiffs on the day is low even by Hancock’s standards. But he worked around base runners, limited hard contact and didn’t walk anybody (though he did plunk two batters). Hancock made it through six innings, giving up nine hits and three runs while striking out three. Two runs came on a homer from Isaac Paredes into the Crawford Boxes that would have been a lazy fly out at most other stadiums. (To be fair, Miles Mastrobuoni picked up his first homer of the year with a similarly shallow fly ball in the fifth.)
Matt Brash worked a scoreless seventh, Carlos Vargas worked a scoreless eighth, and Andrés Muñoz worked a scoreless ninth to pick up his 17th save on the year — the most in MLB.
