Mariners put cart before horse, Josh Naylor points out error, Mariners win 4-3

Anyone can say sorry; not everyone can do sorry. Tonight, Josh Naylor went from a crucial potential rally-killing GIDP to a game-winning hit, and on the way, vaulted the Mariners into the playoffs for the first time since 2022. After missing the playoffs for 21 years, the Mariners will have made it twice during the first half-decade of the 2020s.

Pregame, I asked preview maven and pitching guru Jake Mailhot which of these three games against the Rockies to worry about losing, knowing that ERA’s are fake even when they are eye-wateringly bad like the Rockies, and he said tonight’s. Per Jake: “He [McCade Brown] had a legit breakout this year with some mechanical changes that contribute a ton of deception to his motion. Plus, if Miller isn’t on his game, things could get ugly.” That, folks, is why we pay him the big bucks. [Narrator: We do not pay him the big bucks.]

To be fair to Bryce Miller, he wasn’t exactly off his game. He suffered some bad BABIP luck in the second inning when Jordan Beck led off by poking a little double down the left-field side that took a weird hop off the sidewall (75 EV). Ezequiel Tovar bunted him over because the dream of the ‘90s is alive in Denver, and despite the Rockies giving up a free out and then getting the second out when Brenton Doyle struck out swinging over a splitter, Kyle Karros was able to find a hole on the infield and shoot an RBI single through it.

That wouldn’t have been such a big issue except the Mariners batters had no answer for McCade Brown. It looked like they might get something cooking in the first, when Brown—who can get wild—hit Cal Raleigh in the foot, immediately leaping ahead of the megaphone preachers as most disliked person in the immediate vicinity, and then walked Julio Rodríguez on four straight pitches. But Josh Naylor grounded into an inning-ending double play, and it was as if the Mariners’ offense died along with it. They struck out 10 times against Brown, proof positive of the deception of which Jake spoke, flailing after his sinker—10 of his 15 whiffs!—and not coping well with his secondary stuff, either. They took an abnormally high number of called strikes—17 total—including several for strike three. That’s how it is with interleague opponents, sometimes, but it sure felt flat after the run the Mariners had been on, especially after crushing their divisional opponents this weekend.

The lone bright spot for the Mariners: Dominic Canzone, who tied the game up for a brief but beautiful time with this monster shot in the fifth, somehow only his 11th of the season. It feels like it should be more, right?

But that tie would be short-lived. Bryce Miller was shaky on his return in the sixth, leading off with a lengthy battle against former Angel Mickey Moniak that ended in Bryce serving a hanging slider Moniak scalded into right field. A batter later, Miller totally lost the handle on his pitches, walking Blaine Crim on five not-close pitches that included a gifted strike on 3-0. He avoided disaster on a deep flyout to Beck that advanced Crim to second, but with some hard-hit balls in the inning—110 on the double and 105 on the flyout—Dan Wilson opted to go to the pen for do-it-all-man Eduard Bazardo.

Bazardo was the MVP of the series in Houston but ran into his own bad BABIP luck tonight—although the location of his 1-1 sinker to Tovar, granted the opportunity to swing with two outs, wasn’t ideal, Tovar didn’t square it up but got a two-RBI single out of it anyway, lofting the ball into right field to give the Rockies a 3-1 advantage.

The Rockies went to the bullpen themselves after that inning, using their’ A-side bullpen: Jaden Hill, Jimmy Herget, Juan Mejia, and Victor Vodnik. The Mariners couldn’t get any purchase against Hill or old frenemy Herget, but were able to finally break through against an un-effectively wild Juan Mejia. Luke Raley, pinch hitting for Victor Robles, took 99 off the knee, which would have killed you or I but seemed like a regular Tuesday for Raley. “Any way I can get on base,” an elated Raley declared postgame. “I don’t give a shit.”

As it so often has been with Raley, a small pebble eventually rolled into a big boulder. J.P. Crawford then worked a walk off the wild Mejia, recipient of his own gift strike on a five-pitch walk, but Randy Arozarena—with the crowd alive for the first time all night—struck out, and Cal Raleigh had one of the worst at-bats I’ve seen him take all season, perhaps too eager to repeat his clinching magical hit from 2022. Mejia then hit Julio to load the bases, getting him square in the elbow guard and necessitating his quick hook from the game before the crowd of nearly 35,000 at the park descended upon him with pitchforks and flaming torches.

The Rockies opted to bring in their closer a batter early, bringing Victor Vodnik out to face Josh Naylor. I liked Vodnik as a trade candidate at the deadline and was surprised the abysmal Rockies held on to him, but tonight, he did not have it. He threw Naylor two straight balls, electrifying the crowd, which had mostly slumbered through the first seven and a half innings of the game. Vodnik came back with 98 on the upper rail and Naylor came up with the biggest hit in his short career as a Mariner—which is impressively, a fairly high bar.

Don’t say you’ll do better, just do better. Naylor did, and now the Mariners held their first lead of the night.

The bullpen has been taxed in recent games, but Andrés Muñoz showed no sign of the slight wobble that called for Robles’s outfield heroics in Saturday’s game, mowing down the Rockies 1-2-3 as the crowd roared louder and louder with each subsequent strike, ending by viciously punching out Karros—holder of the earlier RBI—on three straight sliders.

Then: mayhem. Bottles popping. Gabe Speier blowing smoke rings. Randy Arozarena pinwheeling beer cans in the air, spraying everyone and everything in the vicinity like some kind of alcohol-fueled firework. Justin Hollander wearing his hat backwards, promising that the next celebration would be even bigger and better. Cal Raleigh attempting to give media interviews with thoughtful and substantive quotes while being consistently attacked by his teammates pouring beer on him. And off to the side, Josh Naylor, drinking a coconut water and puffing contemplatively on a cigar before diving into the festivities. Enjoying the moment, as should we all.