SEATTLE — The great baseball reset button must be shaped like an O, as in October. Nothing from the last six months really matters. It’s not like a gimmicky hamburger, where the hot stays hot and the cool stays cool. Win one game and you’re broiling.
The Seattle Mariners weren’t supposed to be off last week, not unless they had been eliminated. But they channeled the slogan of their first playoff run — “Refuse To Lose” — and won 17 of 18 through the heart of September. It earned them a bye when the Detroit Tigers, simultaneously, forgot how to win.
Now September’s darlings are playing September’s duds. And, sure enough, October doesn’t care. The Mariners, the team with the most one-run wins in the majors this season, lost by that margin in their first game of the playoffs.
“It always helps to stay playing games, but the season was over, we have a new environment, kind of like a different scenario,” said Julio Rodríguez, the Mariners’ center fielder, after falling to the Tigers, 3-2, in 11 innings. “You just come in to play.”
They came in with all the vibes, all the expectations of success, internally and even nationally. That wasn’t a chip on the team’s shoulder before Game 1: it was a stuffed Mariner Moose perched on the left sleeve of outfielder Victor Robles during introductions.
It was adorable, like the sight of 82-year-old Lou Piniella — still the only manager to guide this team to victory beyond the wild-card round — tossing the ceremonial first pitch. And who didn’t love Gary Payton, the soul of the long-gone SuperSonics, hyping the crowd and raising a trident?
George Kirby sure seemed to respond. He came out firing, striking out three in the top of the first, all with fastballs over 98 miles an hour.
“The energy was electric tonight,” Kirby said. “Big game like that, you want to come out as good as you can. I thought I did that.”
Kirby was one pitch away from shutting out the Tigers through five innings. But that pitch was a high fastball that Kerry Carpenter, his nemesis, buried into the right field seats. It was Carpenter’s fifth career hit off Kirby, all home runs. Kirby looked like he wanted to eat his glove.
“The heater up was working all day, and he finally got to one,” Kirby said. “Just tip your cap. I executed the way I wanted to. I’m not gonna go back and forth in my head if that’s the right pitch or not. I threw it, I was convicted in it, and he hit a homer.”
The Mariners pulled Kirby after five innings and 94 pitches, and manager Dan Wilson said there was no thought of asking for more. Kirby’s season high is 106 pitches, and the Mariners have a strong bullpen. But after five relievers patched together the next five innings, it left Carlos Vargas for the 11th.
Vargas had the highest ERA (as a Mariner) of any of the team’s short relievers, at 3.97 — but at least he didn’t walk a batter all through September. This being October, naturally, he walked the leadoff man on Saturday.
Soon, Vargas was spiking a slider that eluded Cal Raleigh, who said he should have blocked it. In any case, that wild pitch and the go-ahead single by Zach McKinstry were all but fated to follow.
“The single squeaked through, but you can’t walk the first guy of the inning,” Raleigh said. “Usually it’s a recipe for a run.”
It was a weird night for Raleigh, the slugger who hit almost as many home runs (60) as singles (63) in the regular season. The playoff reset turned him, for one night, from Mickey Mantle to Mickey Rivers: this was just the second time in Raleigh’s career that he singled three times in a game.
The problem for the Mariners was that nobody else had a hit besides Rodríguez, who drove in both runs with a homer in the fourth and a single in the sixth. After Josh Naylor’s walk in the first, Seattle’s five through nine hitters did not reach base at all: 24 up, 24 down.
The Mariners, who scored the most runs in the majors in September, just kept going quietly on Saturday. They struck out only eight times, but their fly balls wilted in the crisp autumn air.
“Having good at-bats, putting the ball in play, we did a really good job,” third baseman Eugenio Suárez said. “You see J.P. (Crawford) hit one 106 (mph), it was (an) out, left-center. Naylor hit one 108, it was (an) out. I hit one really well that I thought was in the gap, but they caught it. But that’s our mentality. We’ve got to continue to play like that tomorrow and try to take one.”
About that Sunday game… the pitcher for Detroit will be Tarik Skubal. He was 13-4 with a 2.00 ERA this season against all teams besides the Mariners. Against them, Skubal was 0-2 with a 5.91 ERA.
But if you think that means anything, well, remember the calendar. The first start was on a mid-week afternoon in early April, when a sparse crowd saw the since-released Dylan Moore take Skubal deep. In Skubal’s second start against Seattle, in July, he gave up a triple to Donovan Solano. He’s been released, too.
Rodríguez, at least, went deep off Skubal in that second game. But the Mariners now face the very real possibility of dropping their first two division series games at home. The last time they did that, in 1997 against the Baltimore Orioles, their season ended on the road.
This time, because of the travel days after Games 2 and a possible Game 4, Skubal could start twice. The Mariners can’t win this series unless they take at least one game Skubal starts.
“He’s a great pitcher,” Raleigh said. “But this time of year, there’s gonna be a lot of good pitchers out there. We’re up for the challenge. We’re gonna do our best to game-plan tomorrow and put together some good at-bats and see what we can do off him.”
(Top photo of Mariners’ J.P. Crawford in the 10th inning of Game 1: Steph Chambers/Getty Images)