The good news is that the Mariners weren’t shut out. A last-gasp Julio Rodríguez solo homer helped the 2026 Mariners avoid making some ugly history, on a night when the Mariners opened the celebration of 50 years of the franchise.
The bad news is that they might as well have been, with another lifeless offensive performance – outside of one inning and Julio’s ninth-inning effort to keep the 2026 Mariners out of the record books – en route to a 2-1 loss that had the normally deferential crowd at T-Mobile Park booing lustily.
Advertisement
The Rays jumped ahead early in this one thanks to a home run from Jonny DeLuca, their centerfielder. The Mariners also have a Jonny who plays center field and hits homers (Farmelo), but he is not done cooking yet. I tell you that to distract you from how bad this pitch was from Logan Gilbert: 95 mph, after he’d been at 98 in the first inning, and right in the heart of the plate.
Unsurprising for a pitch located there, that got smoked off the bat, 103 mph into the ‘pen. The Rays made some hard contact off Logan; they already had four balls hit 100 mph or more by the end of the third. They were also very aggressive against Logan, often swinging at the first pitch, especially early in the game; they doubled their lead in the third inning when Jonathan Aranda jumped on a first-pitch slider for a solo homer.
The Mariner dribbled and drabbled some hits off Drew Rasmussen early, an improvement considering he usually crushes the Mariners. Cole Young singled in the first, but was foolishly thrown out trying to steal (no Cole! Bad Cole! Your job is hit singles and get driven in!). In the second, the Mariners were able to stack a couple of baserunners, with Julio collecting a hard-hit single of his own (103.7 off the bat) and Josh Naylor working a four-pitch walk. But Brendan Donovan struck out for the second out, bringing up [brace yourselves] eight-hole hitter Cal Raleigh. What a cursèd sentence to type. Cal, to his credit, also worked a walk, but unfortunately that brought up Colt Emerson, who is, as previously noted, two days old and one huckleberry tall. Rasmussen went right after Colt, feeding him the high heat he can’t lay off of, and he struck out on three pitches to end the inning. I truly believe Emerson will succeed and he’s swimming upstream currently but he just has to make an adjustment on that high stuff. The Rays also have their shortstop, Taylor Walls, batting ninth; he is also hitting around the Mendoza Line; but the entire top half of the Rays lineup is hitting .280 or better, so they’re a little more well-equipped to absorb that batting average.
Advertisement
To be clear, it wasn’t Emerson alone who was chasing after Rasmussen’s high fastball; Dan Wilson noted pregame that Rasmussen was able to expand up but keep it around the top rail close enough to bait the Mariners hitters into having to make quick decisions, leading to a ton of non-squared-up balls.
As they have so many times this season, the Mariners followed up a solid offensive inning where they got traffic on the bases with a wet fart of an inning, as the top of the lineup went down on six total pitches in the bottom of the third. Nice answer-back inning, fellas. That would be the theme of the rest of the night for the offense: the Mariners were aggressive against Rasmussen, but all that added up to was a lot of quick innings and quick outs as the offense again failed to get anything going. They also struck out 12 times, after seemingly getting the strikeouts in check lately.
Logan Gilbert did the best he could with the absolute nothingburger the offense gave him, holding down the Rays well. He had to navigate around a little trouble in the fifth inning after giving up a leadoff double to Victor Mesa Jr. The Mariners also have an outfielder named Victor; the last time he hit a double was July 11, and the last time before that was May 26th.
The Rays then opted to try to small-ball in a run, which wasn’t a bad strategy given it was the bottom of their order and a leadoff double comes around to score 70% of the time, but the Mariners were able to play some solid defense and work around the back-to-back sacrifice bunts. Cal Raleigh made a heads-up play on a bunt from Taylor Walls, getting Mesa trying to score on the contact play, and then Logan Gilbert caught Walls napping at first base, picking him off to end the inning.
Advertisement
“That’s a big spot in the game right there,” said Logan Gilbert. “I was kind of surprised we got him, but I’ll take it, because against a team like that, you can’t play with fire. We were in a tough spot right there and fortunate to get out of it.”
But if you hoped that would inspire the Mariners to turn things around offensively, that hope would be in vain. The Mariners hitters, not exactly covering themselves in glory in the first place, looked utterly helpless against Rasmussen, who accounted for eight of the twelve strikeouts tonight. With Rasmussen finally out of the game in the eighth, the Mariners got a little traffic going when Garrett Cleavinger grazed Brendan Donovan with a pitch to open the eighth, the first time the Mariners had had a baserunner since the second inning. Gross! After Cal Raleigh popped out trying to hit the rare infield home run, Colt Emerson followed came through with a solid line-drive single, which we love to see, but then vaunted on-base threat Taylor Ward struck out for the second out of the inning, and Cole Young grounded out, causing the boo birds at T-Mobile Park to come out in full throat.
The Mariners went with Seranthony Dominguez to pitch the ninth and happily, things went much more smoothly than his first outing as a Mariner. He opened the inning by striking out DeLuca on a sweeper, getting him chasing in the dirt. He got unlucky on a fluky BABIP flyball single to Victor Mesa Jr., who then stole second base (I remember when our Victor used to do things like that), and then nicked Richie Palaccios with a pitch to put two runners on. But Dominguez rebounded to strike out Taylor Walls on a nasty splitter, and then jammed Díaz on a sinker for a harmless inning-ending flyout. So. Much better.
Unfortunately what was not better was the Mariners offense, facing Rays closer Bryan Baker, the latest faceless murderbot to roll out of the Rays pitching machine. Baker rolled through the top of the Mariners lineup with three strikeouts, facing only some resistance in the form of Julio Rodríguez, who dropped the bat on a changeup and obliterated it over the fence, shaking alive the crowd, hoping for some late-inning magic.
Advertisement
Your browser does not support the video tag. Download the video.
But these 2026 Mariners are short on the magic. Josh Naylor struck out looking on three pitches, causing the boos to echo throughout the park.
“We do get traffic,” said Dan Wilson. “We’re able to get some guys on and the next step is getting that big hit. And right now, we haven’t been able to find it. But we’ve got to find it. We’ve got to find it quick.”
They say solo home runs don’t beat you, but they do when your offense can’t muster more than one solo home run in response. Ironically, tonight was also the Mariners alumni home run derby, so at least the fans got to see some offensive fireworks – just not ones from current members of the team.
Read the full article here
