The Mariners have had 2 chances to move 1 win away from the 1st World Series. They’ve failed in both so far. Toronto’s blow them out.
The long, slow, dejected walks back to the dugout told all you needed to know. There were no tridents waiting for them on these.
Julio Rodriguez stepped across home plate, grimaced as he heard the umpire bark “strike three” and flipped his bat upside down into his left hand. Cal Raleigh dropped his head and looked down at the bat he thought he just broke.
Randy Arozarena shook his head, carried his bat in his right hand and looked to the sky.
No answers there, either.
This was the pivot game in this American League Championship Series. And like everyone else the last two days in Seattle, it pivoted decisively to Toronto. The four days since this series began has shown how quickly playoffs, perceptions, entire baseball seasons can change.
The Blue Jays rocked Luis Castillo, the Mariners’ most experienced postseason pitched, out of the game in the third inning. That erased another early lead the Mariners had seized with Josh Naylor’s home run in the second inning.
Seattle’s hitters made Toronto’s 41-year-old starter Max Scherzer look 31 in his Cy Young Award-winning prime, including by reverting to hard, old habits of over-swinging for home runs that never came.
Toronto’s number-nine hitter Andrez Gimenez bludgeoned the Mariners with a two-run home run for the second consecutive night.
And the Mariners got blown out again by the Blue Jays on their home field, 8-2, Thursday in Game 4 of the ALCS.
By the ninth inning, with many in the sellout-crowd of 46,981 gone, a chant of “Let’s Go Blue Jays!” broke out.
Wednesday had dawned in the brightest light possible for the Mariners, for the Pacific Northwest — heck, for anyone who’s been a Seattle baseball fan back to the 1969 Pilots’ single-year stay. The Mariners had a two-games-to-none series lead. They were two wins from their first World Series. And the next three games of the best-of-seven league championship were at T-Mobile Park.
Since then, the Blue Jays have out-scored the Mariners 21-6 in two games to even the series.
It’s now a best-of-three. First team to win two more games goes to the World Series.
Game 5 is Friday afternoon, again at T-Mobile Park. Bryce Miller starts for Seattle, trying to restore the vibes this team had 48 hours ago.
The Mariners still have not won a home game in the league championship series since Oct. 15, 2000.
M’s make Max Scherzer ace-like
Scherzer is a three-time Cy Young Award winner. He’s an eight-time All-Star. He tied a major-league record Thursday by playing for his sixth team in the postseason.
He’s also 41 years old. The Blue Jays didn’t have him on their roster for the division series against the Yankees. He hadn’t won a game in almost two full months.
Yet the Mariners had Scherzer looking like he was in his prime again. He was throwing fastballs 97 mph in the first inning of his 500th career start. The only hits the Mariners got off him: Naylor’s solo home run in the second, his single in the fourth and Dominic Canzone’s ground-ball single in the fifth.
He struck out Rodriguez twice, on a curveball in the fourth then slider in the sixth. His curve also struck out Eugenio Suarez in the fourth and Arozarena in the fifth.
Naylor hit Scherzer’s second pitch of the second inning over the center-field wall to jolt the packed house and give the Mariners a 1-0 lead. It was the eighth time in nine games this postseason Seattle scored first.
But the M’s are just 4-4 in those games. Naylor also singled in the bottom of the fourth. Scherzer began that inning with a strikeout of Rodriguez and ended it striking out Suarez, both with slow curveballs.
Scherzer hadn’t started a game since last month. He’d allowed at least four runs in give of his previous six starts. Yet Thursday in Game 4 he allowed two runs in 5 2-3 innings, with four walks and five strikeouts.
He so enjoyed shutting down the Mariners, his face turned red and he angrily barked back at John Schneider when Toronto’s manager came out to the mound in the bottom of the fifth, as if to remove him from the game. Scherzer won that standoff — then struck out Arozarena on a curve low and away to end the inning. He pitched two outs into the sixth before leaving having thrown 87 pitches.
Seattle finally got multiple runners on base immediately after Scherzer left, and had a mini rally going with two on against reliever Mason Fluharty while down 5-1. Suarez .
Luis Castillo’s sudden exit
Castillo’s night ended abruptly in the third innings. Toronto’s Isiah Kiner-Falefa led off with a double that bounded to the left of Eugenio Suarez just inside third base. Then with the count 2-2 on Gimenez, the Blue Jays’ number-nine hitter hit a two-run home run off a Mariners starter for the second consecutive night. Gimenez hadn’t hit a home run since Aug. 27 before these two the last two nights.
Now down 2-1, Castillo gave up consecutive one-out singles to Nathan Lukes and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Then he walked Alejandro Kirk to load the bases.
Castillo’s manager Dan Wilson had seen enough. In a 2-1 game in the third, he brought top middle reliever Gabe Speier in from the Mariners bullpen. Castillo, Seattle’s most experienced starting pitcher, was out after 2 1-3 innings.
Castillo’s problem was similar to starter George Kirby’s issue in Game 3 Wednesday. He left his pitches — straight, breaking, fast, off-speed — over the plate, thigh- to ribs high.
Speier got ahead in the count on his first batter, Daulton Varsho, 1-2. Then he missed with two 96-mph fastballs and, on 3-2, a sinker. The walk forced in Toronto’s third run of the inning.
Speier rallied to strike out Ernie Clement and Addison Barger in succession to end the inning and leave the bases loaded. But the Mariners had another hole to dig out of.
And it got deeper.
The Mariners’ answer in the bottom of the third got ruined after Leo Rivas, starting at second base in a lineup change that put Victor Robles on the bench Thursday, walked but Scherzer picked him off first base. Kiner-Falefa singled leading off the inning. After a sacrifice bunt, George Springer doubled sharply through the boos he gets every time he comes to the plate. That scored Kiner-Falefa to make it 4-1.
Matt Brash entered with two outs and Springer on third base. Brash’s second pitch skipped off the dirt. Catcher Raleigh turned his glove one way then another trying to stop the ball. It ticked off his mitt and rolled away toward Toronto’s dugout. The wild pitch scored Springer, and the Blue Jays led 5-1.
Category: General Sports
