Seattle wins the first two league-championship games for the 1st time in franchise history. 2 wins from first World Series. Home games next.
The Mariners’ mostly tortured history?
Jorge Polanco, Julio Rodriguez and the 2025 M’s are making their own.
They are owning an October that is more mind-blowing by the day.
The clutch Polanco, otra vez, and Rodriguez stunned top-seeded Toronto’s packed, roaring Rogers Centre crowd of 44,814 by hitting three-run home runs. Local guy Josh Naylor hit his first home run this postseason. And a bullpen charitably described as rocky earlier these playoffs was rock-solid Monday. Eduard Bazardo, Carlos Vargas and Emerson Hancock threw **six* shutout innings. That was after ineffective starter Logan Gilbert gave back an early, 3-0 lead.
Incredibly, it was Mariners 10, Blue Jays 3, in Game 2 of the American League Championship Series. More incredibly: The M’s won both games in Toronto for a 2-0 series lead. And now this best-of-seven set heads to Seattle.
This is the fourth league championship in the 48-year history of the Mariners.
It’s the first time Seattle has ever led an ALCS two games to none.
The Mariners are two wins from their first World Series. They have home games for the next three — or maybe only two? — games back at off-the-hook T-Mobile Park beginning with Game 3 Wednesday afternoon.
No one in the Pacific Northwest saw this coming.
Except the 26 guys doing it.
Polanco was the hero that got the Mariners here with a single in the bottom of the 15th inning to win the deciding fifth game of the division series over Detroit. His RBI singles in the sixth and eighth innings Sunday won the Mariners Game 1 in Toronto 3-1.
He did it again Monday in Game 2 of the ALCS.
A wild first four innings got wilder for Seattle when Polanco broke a 3-3 with Randy Arozarena and Cal Raleigh on base in the top of the fifth. Polanco sent a thigh-high, 98-mph fastball from Toronto reliever Louis Varland just over the wall beyond right-center field. His third home run this postseason restored the three-run lead Rodriguez had given the Mariners with his home run in the top of the first.
As Polanco went trident-up in the Mariners dugout after his game-breaking homer, his biggest teammate cheerleader was Rodriguez. The All-Star center fielder pumped both his arms to the gray sky above, roaring for Polanco. That was about a minute after Rodriguez had struck out to precede Polanco’s missile launch. The rollicking Mariners led 6-3. Canada’s Thanksgiving day was suddenly thankless.
Polanco’s blast left Rogers Centre so silent, you could hear one of the Mounties from Royal Canadian Mounted Police that were the color guard for the Canadian national anthem before first pitch mount his horse.
Polanco is the first player in major-league history to have a go-ahead hit in the fifth inning or later in three consecutive postseason games.
Seattle’s lead grew from there.
It got to 7-3 in the sixth. Backup catcher Mitch Garver, the subject of non-stop ire across the Pacific Northwest for his 2024 and early 2025 struggles, tripled off the left-center field wall leading off. Leo Rivas pinch-ran for him. Rivas scored one out later on J.P. Crawford’s single off reliever Mason Fluherty.
In the seventh, Toronto-area native Josh Naylor joined in the home-run fun. He launched a two-run homer into the standing patrons of one of the bars beyond right field here. As he crossed home plate to make it 9-3 Seattle, Naylor waved to the dozen or so roaring fans apparently from Naylor’s hometown of Mississauga, Ontario, who were about a half-dozen rows behind the Mariners dugout.
Then Naylor came out of the dugout to thrust the celebration trident at his cheering section, after his first home run this postseason.
The Mariners need to sign pending free agent Naylor for 2026 beyond yesterday.
Later in the seventh, Crawford got his second RBI in as many innings. His sacrifice fly scored Eugenio Suarez from third, after Suarez had walked and advanced on two more walks. Improbably, the Mariners had a touchdown lead, 10-3.
Wilson didn’t have to use his tired, key relivers to keep the Mariners ahead in the middle to late innings. Eduard Bazardo, Carlos Vargas and Emerson Hancock held the Blue Jays to their three runs from the fourth through the ninth innings.
This was Seattle’s first victory without using top relievers Gabe Speier, Matt Brash or Andrés Muñoz since they clinched their first AL West division title since 2001 on Sept. 24, running away from the lowly Colorado Rockies.
The ALCS now goes to Seattle for Games 3, 4 and (if needed) 5 at T-Mobile Park. George Kirby, brilliant against Detroit Friday to start the Mariners’ epic, 15-inning Game 5 of the division series, starts Game 3 Wednesday at 5:08 p.m. in Seattle. He’ll oppose Toronto right-hander Shane Bieber.
Eduard Bazardo, unlikely hero
Game 2 starter Logan Gilbert didn’t have it.
Bazardo sure did.
One of the more unlikely Mariners heroes increasingly became one during the regular season, getting higher and higher leverage situations from manager Dan Wilson.
Monday in Game 2 was the biggest spot yet for the 30-year-old former international free agent signed out his native Venezuela by Boston in 2014, who debuted in the majors for the Red Sox seven years after he signed.
He entered for the bottom of the fourth, for the struggling Gilbert, in a 3-3 game. Bazardo had the Blue Jays who had been ripping Gilbert with line drives all over Rogers Centre flailing. Four of the seven Jays that faced Bazardo produced topped choppers that didn’t get past the pitcher’s mound.
Bazardo and catcher Raleigh fielded them all and threw to Naylor at first base for outs.
Bazardo pitched two scoreless innings, allowing only a ground-ball single. When he stranded a Toronto runner at second base to end the fifth, keep Seattle in front 6-3 and keep Rogers Centre hushed, his teammates swarmed Bazardo in the Mariners dugout.
Manager Dan Wilson hugged the right-hander. Rodriguez hugged him, twice.
Then the superstar showed Bazardo an elaborate hand-shake celebration. It ended with Rodriguez pantomiming a cowboy lasso rope toss then body turn. Bazardo and Rodriguez laughed.
Wild start to Game 2
Rodriguez jolted the packed house three batters into the game.
He smashed a three-run home run just inside the foul-pole netting in sharp left field. After he fell behind to Yesavage 0-2 Rodriguez turned on a 1-2 slider at 84 mph Toronto’s rookie starter hung over the plate. Rodriguez took the trident the Mariners have to celebrate home runs to punctuate his 34th home run of the regular and postseason. He paraded through the cheering dugout with it for multiple minutes.
Gilbert and the Mariners had an instant, 3-0 lead three batters into the game. The prospect of coming home with a 2-0 series lead and the next three games in Seattle was real.
Except to the Blue Jays.
They got two of those runs back in the bottom of the first.
Gilbert lacked the command of his breaking pitches, left many hanging over the plate, and didn’t get two fastballs called strikes that should have been as Toronto tied the game and ended his night after just three innings.
George Springer just missed his second lead-off home run to begin a game in two nights, foul beyond left field by a few feet. Then he doubled, his major league-record 12th career hit to leadoff a postseason game. Nathan Lukes then hit a chopper Naylor fielded wide of first base in plenty of time to throw out Toronto’s right fielder, with Gilbert running over to cover first base. But Naylor rushed an awkward, sidearm toss that was more a football quarterback’s option pitch to a tailback. The ball sailed well wide left of the pitcher off the bag to the railing of Seattle’s dugout for a two-base error and a run scored.
Lukes scored when Alejandro Kirk singled off Gilbert with two outs.
Toronto tied it at 3 in the bottom of the second, with a defensive choice by Naylor again a factor. On a chopper by Davis Schneider to Naylor, the first baseman could have thrown to second base to retire Ernie Clement from first there. Shortstop J.P. Crawford was standing on the base waiting for the throw — that never came. Naylor walked over to first to record the out there.
Clement got to third on another ground out. Then Gilbert should have struck out Springer to end the inning there, twice. But home plate umpire Doug Eddings called two strikes on the outside edge of the plate for balls three and four, and a walk. Lukes then singled home Clement to tie the game, instead of the inning ending with Seattle still up 3-2.
It was not Gilbert’s night, at all: three innings, five hits, three runs, two earned, one walk, two strikeouts.
It was Polanco’s night.
Again.
Category: General Sports
