Julio Rodriguez hit three doubles last night. Three. Not a homer. Not a grand slam. Three doubles. The man kept stopping at second base like he had a reservation there.
Mariners at Twins
For five innings this was a pitchers’ duel, if you define a pitchers’ duel as one team scoring a run and the other team staring at the scoreboard. Byron Buxton homered in the fifth. The Mariners had nothing. Logan Gilbert had six hits against him and one run and he was, by the standards of this team, performing heroically.
Then the sixth inning happened and Julio Rodriguez decided he was going to hit doubles until someone physically removed the bat from his hands. He went 3-for-5 with three doubles. Julio Rodriguez last night treated the outfield wall like a personal friend he wanted to visit but not go home with.
Josh Naylor tied the game in the sixth with a single. Cole Young put Seattle ahead in the seventh with another single. Then in the eighth Naylor hit a three-run homer to right and the game went from a one-run lead to something the Twins would rather not discuss. Naylor finished 3-for-5 with four RBI. Rodriguez doubled home two more in the ninth because he had apparently not yet made his point.
Logan Gilbert gave up six hits and a Byron Buxton homer last night. He threw five innings and left the game losing 1-0. Nobody is putting that line on a poster. But here’s what actually happened: Gilbert didn’t have it, and he decided that wasn’t going to matter. He kept the Twins to one run with six hits against him, handed it to the bullpen down one, and the bullpen threw four innings of one-hit, zero-run baseball. That’s a clean handoff. That’s a relay race where nobody dropped the baton and nobody tried to run an extra leg.
Minnesota went 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position after Seattle tied the game. The Twins had traffic all night - seven hits, guys on base, opportunities sitting there waiting. And once the score was level, not a single Twin could deliver. Joe Ryan gave them six strong innings and a lead. The lineup said thanks for nothing.
The series is tied 1-1.
The Number: 19 Runners Left on Base
Runners left on base by the Mariners in a 7-1 win. Seattle scored seven runs and stranded nineteen. The Twins stranded twenty-one in the same game. Forty combined runners left on base. Forty human beings stood on a base, looked toward home plate, and watched someone else make an out. Target Field had 17,821 fans in attendance. There were nearly as many stranded baserunners as there were people in the upper deck thinking about leaving.
The Streak: Every Other AL West Team Lost on April 28
Houston lost to Baltimore. Texas lost to New York - their third straight. The Angels lost to the White Sox. The WHITE SOX. Oakland lost to Kansas City. And Seattle won. The Mariners are now one game back of first place in a division where the leader is 15-14. That’s not a division. That’s five teams standing in a circle pointing at each other asking “are you gonna be good?” and nobody raising their hand. Seattle is 15-16 and a game out of first. The Angels have lost five in a row. Houston is 11-19. This is the AL West right now and nobody should feel good about any of it, including us.
The Angels have lost five straight. Their most recent loss was to the White Sox. I didn’t know you could lose to a team that doesn’t technically exist anymore.
The Mariners are 15-16 and one game out of first place, and if you don’t think about that too hard, it’s the best news we’ve had all month.
Bobby Bunt