Mariners don’t do easy: George Kirby rocked, Blue Jays roll 13-4 in ALCS Game 3

You thought this was going to be easy?

The Mariners don’t do easy.

It was all so tantalizing. Right away in Game 3 of the American League Championship Series Wednesday night, Julio Rodriguez jolted Toronto starter Shane Bieber, and rocked the house. Rodriguez blasted a two-run home run into the back of Seattle’s bullpen. The 46,471 packed into T-Mobile Park were rockin’.

It was all so perfect. Ichiro Suzuki, Randy Johnson, Edgar Martinez, Jay Buhner were all in the park. Just before first pitch, Buhner had taken the stadium’s public-address microphone, plus the team’s celebration, gold trident they hoist after home runs. From behind home plate the former Mariners All-Star and Gold Glove right fielder bellowed into it a PG-13 version of catcher Cal Raleigh’s instantly famous proclamation before this postseason.

“Let’s go win the whole F-in’ thing!” Buhner yelled.

The Mariners were up 2-0 right away in Game 3 of the ALCS they’d never before this led two games to none. Dreams of Mariners three-games-to-none series lead in this best of seven, dreams of being one win away from Seattle’s first World Series, weren’t just fantasies.

It was on.

The Blue Jays bludgeoning George Kirby changed all that. In a hurry.

Kirby, Seattle’s most regularly rested starter throughout this postseason, allowed home runs to nine hitter Andres Gimenez, George Springer and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in consecutive innings. He allowed eight runs from the third inning through one batter into the fifth.

That 2-0 lead, and those Seattle dreams, died — for now — amid 12 unanswered runs by the Blue Jays.

Toronto’s lethal offense that blew the New York Yankees out of the division series blew out the Mariners 13-4 Wednesday night.

Seattle still has not won a home game in a league championship series in exactly 25 years, since Oct. 15, 2000.

Rodriguez’s home run was his second in as many games as the third batter of the game.

But then Bieber looked like the ace Cleveland traded to Toronto this summer. He retired 16 of the next 18 Mariners and cruised through six innings. He allowed only three other hits after Rodriguez’s third home run of this postseason. He struck out eight.

The Mariners’ other runs came in the bottom of the eighth, long after this game was lost, on back-to-back home runs by Randy Arozarena and Cal Raleigh off Toronto reliever Yariel Rodriguez.

Kirby allowed eight runs on eight hits in four-plus innings. So much for that career ERA of 1.50 in four postseason appearances entering Wednesday.

At the end of the third of his four-inning shelling, Kirby stomped down the dugout steps to the clubhouse tunnel. He took off his glove and slammed it into the facing of the cement, dugout roof.

So now Seattle’s task has changed. It’s win the next two at home, Game 4 Thursday with extra-rested Luis Castillo starting then Game 5 Friday, to avoid returning to Toronto and ending this series right here.

Just not right now.

Blue Jays break out on Kirby

The last nine postseason games at T-Mobile Park dating to 2001 had six or fewer combined runs, the longest such streak of any venue.

That ended quickly Wednesday. The Blue Jays and Mariners combined for seven runs by the third inning.

Rodriguez jolted Bieber and the park by ripping a 93-mph, four-seam fastball. It was 2-0 Mariners.

Kirby, the only Mariners starting pitcher on regular rest and between-games schedule throughout this postseason, got rocked quickly and decisively. The Blue Jays scored five runs in the third inning and a sixth in the top of the fourth.

That turned the Mariners’ early, 2-0 lead and visions of what could be into a 6-2 deficit and reality of what was.

Toronto had five hits to get its five runs in the top of the third. All five hits were on pitches Kirby left up, thigh-high or higher, in the strike zone. One of the few Kirby got down was way too low, into the dirt and skipping off the inside of catcher Cal Raleigh’s wrist with the bases loaded for a wild pitch. That scored Toronto’s go-ahead run for a 3-2 lead.

The Blue Jays’ blow-back inning began with Kirby allowing a double by eight hitter Ernie Clement. Then Toronto’s number-nine batter Andres Gimenez lauched Kirby’s second pitch to him over the wall beyond right field. It was Gimenez’s first home run since Aug. 27. It hushed the raucous crowd and tied the game at 2.

Two pitches after Kirby’s run-scoring wild pitch, Daulton Varsho lined a double that scored Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Alejandro Kirk.

Then Andres Gimenez, Toronto’s number-nine batter, sent Kirby’s second pitch over the wall beyond right field. Gimenez’s first home run since Aug. 27 hushed the raucous crowd and tied the game at 2.

Mariners’ changed approach midgame

With his offense doing nothing against the dominant Bieber, Mariners manager Dan Wilson and pitching coach Pete Woodworth made the decision early, while Kirby was getting rocked: We are not going to expend the bullpen in this one.

Jumbled by the 15-inning final game to win the division series over Detroit Friday, the M’s had just gotten the pitching staff back in order while winning the first two games of this ALCS in Toronto.

So Wilson kept Kirby out there for the eight runs over 74 pitches.

Then he brought in pitchers from the bottom of Seattle’s playoff roster: Carlos Vargas, Caleb Ferguson and Luke Jackson. Only Vargas had pitched in this series, and he did only when Game 2 become a blowout for the Mariners in Toronto Monday.

Vargas and Ferguson allowed five more runs combined after Kirby left Game 3 Wednesday. Three of those runs came on Kirk’s massive home run off Ferguson in the sixth inning. Kirk struck that 94-mph, four-seam fastball on the outside corner so hard the opposite way well beyond right field you could hear it in Tacoma.