Randy Arozarena, Mariners rally for improbable walkoff win vs. Astros
SEATTLE – Whenever he steps to the plate, Randy Arozarena usually makes his intentions quite apparent: He going to swing as hard as he can and he’s going to try to hit the baseball as far as he can.
He did both in the eighth inning Wednesday afternoon when he belted a mood-shifting grand slam into the Houston Astros bullpen beyond the left-field wall.
Up to that point, the Mariners’ lumber had maintained its interminable slumber that had defined much of the first two weeks of the season.
If Arozarena’s slam served as the much-needed wake-up call, his bases-loaded heroics in the ninth inning served to ease bubbling tensions about the state of the team just 18 hours after a demoralizing, 12-inning loss.
Facing a five-run deficit with two outs in the eighth inning, staring down their worst 13-game start in 14 years, the Mariners instead walked off with an improbable 7-6 victory when Arozarena drew a bases-loaded walk off the Astros’ Bryan Abreu before a crowd of 20,556 at T-Mobile Park.
“I’m a guy that when things aren’t going right, I’m always trying to get everybody hyped up,” Arozarena said through interpreter Freddy Llanos. “I always see myself kind of like a motor, trying to pass the energy that I have to everyone else.”
Arozarena is the first player in franchise history to hit a grand slam and draw a walk-off walk in the same game, and the Mariners (5-8) rallied for their first series win of the season despite a 3.2% chance to win when he stepped to the plate with the bases loaded in the eighth.
Arozarena was hunting a fastball, and he got one – 91 mph on the inside corner from Astros lefty Steven Okert. And Arozarena sent it 384 feet out for his third homer in the first 13 games of the season.
“He’s a baseball genius; I would say it like that,” said Julio Rodriguez, whose two-strike double drove in two runs in the ninth to tie the score at 6. “… He loves the game; he loves to compete; loves to win. And whenever he steps on the field, you definitely know that he’s going to be giving his best for the team.”
The Mariners had pulled within 5-4 going into the ninth inning thanks to Arozarena’s first grand slam with Seattle. But the Astros scored an insurance run in the top of the ninth and handed a two-run lead over to Abreu, one of their most experienced and effective relievers.
Donovan Solano led off the bottom of the ninth by shooting a 0-2 line drive into right field for a single. With out one, Miles Mastrobuoni singled sharply up the middle.
The Mariners caught a break when J.P. Crawford sent an awkward groundball just fair up the third-base line, where new Astros third baseman Isaac Paredes, who fielded it next to the bag and applied a quick tag on Solano as the Mariners runner retreated back to the bag.
Solano was initially ruled out, but Mariners coaching assistant Andy Bissell, who oversees video replays, immediately called for a challenge. After a review, the umpiring crew overturned the call. Solano was safe.
Rodriguez then stepped to the plate with the bases loaded mired in a 1-for-22 slump. On a well-placed 0-2 pitch on the lower-outside corner, Rodriguez sent Abreu’s 98.7-mph fastball toward the right-field line – with a 98.7 mph exit velocity – for a two-run double.
Three batters later, Arozarena won it by taking a 3-2 slider that Abreu left up and well out of the zone.
“These guys never doubted; they never felt like they were out of it,” manager Dan Wilson said. “They put together a really good eighth inning to get close, and then that ninth inning to do it again – it’s impressive. It really is. And they do it so often.”
A loss to the rival Astros (5-7) seemed inevitable for most of the afternoon Wednesday, and it would have been fitting during a week in which the Mariners have lost so much already. Right fielder Victor Robles will be out for at least three months with a shoulder injury, and on Wednesday morning rookie second baseman Ryan Bliss – just starting to get his sea legs under him – landed on the injured list with a biceps tear.
The Mariners have already been without George Kirby, one of their most dependable starting pitchers, and a fanbase that has been tormented by a lifetime’s worth of offensive ineptitude the past few years was again starting to grow restless from the same ol’ problems.
Now the Mariners can carry some positive momentum into a weekend series against the first-place Texas Rangers staring Friday night at T-Mobile Park.
“I know we have a good group. We do have a good group,” Arozarena said. “And I know it’s early in the season, but the object is in October – I want to get back to October. Like I said, it’s still early on, but we have a tight group and we have a good group, and I think we’re going to get there.”
After striking out 19 times and going 1 for 19 with runners in scoring position in Tuesday’s 12-inning loss, the Mariners offensive woes continued for the first seven innings Wednesday. Houston’s Hunter Brown dominated the Mariners lineup over six shutout innings, allowing just two hits with no walks and three strikeouts.
Luis F. Castillo, in his second start for the Mariners, and second major-league start period, gave the M’s just about all they could have reasonably hoped for – 100 pitches over four innings, with six runs, four runs (three earned), five walks and three strikeouts.
Casey Lawrence, a 37-year-old right-hander promoted from Triple-A Tacoma earlier in the day, picked up the win with three innings of relief on a day when Seattle’s bullpen was extremely thin.