In trying to get signed, the Beatles had to settle for a producer who’d mostly made comedy records and listened to classical music, so they were in no position to fight for extra studio time when making their debut album. Thus, they had to record ten songs in just a single day at EMI Studios. Even for a band used to running on fumes (and a little something extra) from their days of playing marathon sets in Hamburg, that was a tall order. They managed to wrap nine of the songs by 10:00 pm, but they still needed an album closer, which was much more important in the days when music was played on physical media, the true No Skips Era. Above and beyond getting into overtime in the studio, the Beatles were physically wrecked. They had one chance to reach back and give it everything they’d got before things got dire. They’d have to walk it off.
The Mariners found themselves in a similar situation in this afternoon’s tilt against the Chicago White Sox.
Logan Gilbert got the start, and did that maddening new thing he’s doing where he racked up whiffs except when he didn’t, alternating between looking nigh untouchable and laboring through at-bats against replacement-level hitters. Still, despite working harder than he had to, Logan got through the early innings unscathed.
Unfortunately, so did Chicago’s starter, Shane Smith. The Mariners’ offense had gotten little going and tallied four strikeouts through the first two innings. Making matters worse, their star player of the past week hurt himself in the trying. Trade deadline acquisition Josh Naylor took a hefty swing in his second-inning at-bat and grimaced for a while before climbing back into the box. It was noticeable, but hard to be too concerned for the Big Grumper, who just always kind of looks like that. But he did the same thing on a similar swing in the third inning, and did not come back out to play first base after that. Kate reports from the clubhouse that the Mariners are saying it is merely “shoulder soreness” and that he will be day-to-day; and in honor of Ryan Divish being back on the beat, I’ll add his trademark “as we all are.” So things could have been much worse, and despite an 0-for-2 and incomplete game, I’m giving Naylor today’s Sun Hat Award for a noteworthy contribution to a game because he made us care this much about his presence in the lineup just two weeks into his tenure. It’s only been a fortnight, but already, Baby, it’s you.
It was a bit easier to stomach, at least for today, because by the time Naylor exited the game, Seattle had gotten a 2-0 lead. J.P. Crawford led off the third with a line drive to center field. And for as much as the trades for Naylor and Eugenio Suárez have made this a more potent offense overall, I personally feel it the most strongly when the lineup turns over. After getting through a bottom of the order that features Crawford and usually also Cole Young putting up pesky at bats and getting on base at a pretty frequent clip, the lineup turns over, and bam! There’s a Mack Truck in the form of Randy Arozarena. It’s such an F You to the pitcher. And the pitcher felt it today as Arozarena went deep for the 23rd time this year, tying his single-season-high from 2023. We’ll call this the “I Saw Her Standing There” of today’s recording session, an early highlight.
A short time later, Gilbert let the White Sox have half the margin back by surrendering a ding dong to Michael A. Taylor. That’s not an uncommon turn of events it turns out. His wOBA climbs by more than 40 points when facing the Mariners, and despite playing a mere 25 of his career 1,177 games against the Mariners, he’s hit almost 5% of his home runs off them. To go the obvious route in today’s tortured metaphor, this dinger was Misery. But Logan limited the damage to that run, ultimately pitching five innings with six strikeouts and three walks. He used his fastball more often than usual today, and with success–getting nine of his 16 whiffs with it–notwithstanding the fact that the White Sox are pretty OK against heaters. Or perhaps because of that. Logan credited Mitch Garver’s game calling for zigging where the Sox expected a zag, saying, “That had a lot to do with what Mitch was seeing. . . We don’t usually go to that as much with two strikes. It’s usually more slider, splitter. So I think it worked in the first inning, and then we just kind of rolled with it as probably a different look than what the report on me might be.”
Still, it would have been nice if he hadn’t labored so much, as the Mariners had to use another five pitchers just to get through a regulation nine innings. With Carlos Vargas surrendering another solo shot, the game was tied at 2-2, staring down the barrels of extras.
Not that it had to be that way, for reasons beyond Gilbert’s struggles. The Mariners had a pretty decent chance to put the game away in the eighth after Cal Raleigh worked a walk and Julio Rodríguez sent a flare to right field to put runners on first and second with nobody out. That brought up Josh Naylor’s spot in the order. When Naylor left the game in the first place, Manager Dan Wilson sent out Donovan Solano as his replacement, for his first appearance since July 24th, sparing us the need to ask for a photo of Solano holding today’s USA Today. But with the Mariners’ best chance to score since the third inning, Wilson pulled Solano and asked Cole Young to get a pinch-hit sacrifice bunt. So we get treated to a round of bunting discourse. And this turns out to be a more difficult question than the hard liners on either side would have you believe.
Thanks to Ben Clemens at FanGraphs, we now have updated run-expectancy tables that account for the changes in the game since the idea was conceived. For those new to the concept, a run-expectancy table shows how many runs an average team facing an average pitcher is likely to score in an inning for each of the 24 possible combinations of outs and runners on the bases. For example, over the 2021-24 seasons, a team with runners on first and second with nobody out can be expected to score an average of 1.51 runs before the inning is over. That’s the situation the Mariners were in when Cole Young stepped into the box. If the team successfully lays down a sacrifice bunt, they will have runners at second and third with one out. At that point, the team can be expected to score 1.41 runs before the inning is over. So, ignoring for a moment the possibilities of a defensive miscue or failing to get the bunt down, Wilson’s choice reduced the Mariners’ run expectancy by 0.1 runs over one plate appearance. In the course of a baseball game, a tenth of a run is a big deal.
But it’s not the whole story. That’s because the standard run expectancy tables do not account for context. When the game is tied in the bottom of the eighth inning, you don’t care so much about the second, third, or fourth runs of an inning. Just scoring one run to take the lead is massive because you only have one inning left to cover, and especially if you can do so using Ándres Muñoz. Thus, strategically, you want to maximize your chance of scoring a single run, even if you do so at the cost of reducing the chance of scoring multiple runs. Moving the lead runner from second base to third does just that, notwithstanding the out it takes to get him there. While a runner is only marginally more likely to score from third base than he is from second on a base hit, he can also score on a wild pitch or a sacrifice fly. Wilson doubled down on the choice by pulling Cal Raleigh off the bases in favor of Miles Mastrobouni, even though doing so meant trading in the team’s best (though admittedly currently struggling) hitter for one of its worst, because he’s that much faster than Raleigh. And it turns out that despite what the run expectancy tables would have you believe about an average situation, in context, they support Wilson’s choice in this situation. Both FanGraphs and Baseball Savant’s win probability charts gave the Mariners a 2% greater chance of winning the game after Young’s sac bunt.
Again, though, we’ve simplified. The numbers here only account for league averages. They don’t know that Cole Young is a hitter’s hitter, batting .279/.354/.393 since his bad first week in the bigs, and that he only strikes out 15.7% of the time. They also don’t know that Chicago’s pitcher, Grant Taylor, has dominated left-handed hitters in his short pro career. So there’s plenty of room for disagreement. Probably nobody should speak with the surehanded confidence you see whenever bunting comes up on the Internet. The one thing we really can say for sure is it’s a credit to Cole Young, who completed the assignment he was given with a masterful bunt on his first try. A great little performance from someone who only had the spotlight for a moment calls to mind the marvelous gusto with which Ringo sings on his cover of The Shirelles’ “Boys.”
But the controversy surrounding bunting in the modern game meant there was quite a bit of bellyaching after the Mariners were unable to score, having surrendered an out for free. And it didn’t look great as the game slipped into extras with the bullpen dwindling.
It did get Master Bunny into the game though, which would come around again to matter after the White Sox took the lead in the 10th. With the Mariners now down 3-2, and Arozarena starting the inning on second base, Master Bunny was asked to bunt him over to third. But we’re not doing more bunting discourse. Instead, we’ll just note that he got the bunt down, a throwing error allowed Arozarena to score the tying run, and some heads up baserunning by Bunny to get back to first base let him take second as well. Even more impressively, he then eked out a steal of third base, a move Wilson lit up when talking about after the game: “Not being in there as a regular [anymore], that takes a lot of courage to do that.” It was classic George Harrison stuff, better work than you’d expect from a supporting player, this afternoon’s “Chains.“
Despite the effort, the Mariners couldn’t bring him home, so the game went to the 11th inning for already the 12th time this year. And maybe it’s just me, but I feel like because the Manfred Man hasn’t been around all that long, people might be sleeping on what the M’s are doing this season, pushing the game past the tenth inning so often. For context, they didn’t play a single game longer than ten innings last year. It just doesn’t happen that much anymore. But they could well be on their way to setting an unbreakable niche record here.
After Jackson Kowar pitched his best outing in months, the Mariners were running on fumes. The bench was empty after Dylan Moore replaced Cole Young (who had replaced Donovan Solano, who had replaced Josh Naylor). And the bullpen had just one pitcher left. It was feeling like now or never, and the Mariners had to reach back to finish things off. The job fell to Dominic Canzone, who had to face a lefty.
When the Beatles faced this scenario 62 years ago, John Lennon’s voice was raw from an entire day of singing. Add in going to overtime, and they weren’t going to get a second take. Plus, between the era’s expense and technological constraints on engineering, the band had to record all the parts at once. They delivered with a manic and raw recording that you simply don’t see in modern pop, and I say that as someone whose bona fides as a lover of modern pop are well established. Likewise, down to the wire, Canzone reached back and delivered an instant classic, walking off a series sweep that pushed the Mariners’ playoff odds up to 86.1%, higher than the Astros. And the celebration sure had a lot of Twisting and Shouting. You might want to play these videos together with the Mariners clip on mute. We can all be Paul McCartney as the record wraps, yelling, “yeah!”
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