Jarred Kelenic hits monster home run as Mariners end road trip with win

CHICAGO – Less than 24 hours after what has been and could be their worst loss of the season, the Seattle Mariners returned to Wrigley Field unfazed for a perfect sun-drenched afternoon of baseball.

If they were wounded by their collapse the night before, they didn’t show it in their pregame warmups and routines.

If they were frustrated by losing their previous three games in dubious fashion, sabotaging what was a promising road trip, it wasn’t mentioned.

If there was any panic starting to resonate due to their suboptimal start to this season, they seemed to be ignoring it.

Instead, they went out and provided a one-game reminder of why preseason expectations, not hopes, for this team were higher than any team in the past two decades and why there had been so much grumbling among the fan base over the past week.

The Mariners got a brilliant outing from starter Logan Gilbert and plenty of run support, highlighted back-to-back solo homers from Teoscar Hernandez and Jarred Kelenic to close out the road trip with a 5-2 victory over the Cubs. Kelenic’s blast to straightway center was his third homer in the past three games.

The Mariners finished the trip 3-3 and were essentially two or three plays from going 5-1. Wednesday’s victory didn’t magically fix the issues facing this team as it heads back to Seattle for a nine-game homestand, starting Friday. There are still slumping hitters in the lineup, inconsistency in the bullpen and injury issues. But it was a needed reprieve from the less than stellar play of the previous three days and much of the first two weeks of the season.

“A nice bounce-back today,” manager Scott Servais said. “We go 3-3 on the road trip, which isn’t that bad. We had some rough losses on this trip, but it will be good to go back home. Guys are starting to feel better about themselves, and we need to have a good homestand.”

Coming off a forgettable start in his previous outing, Gilbert pitched 6⅔ innings, allowing one run on four hits with a walk and seven strikeouts. A performance more impressive considering the 80-degree temperatures and a steady wind blowing out to the beer-soaked bleachers.

“Logan certainly set the tone, and we needed it in a very hitter-friendly ballpark today with the wind blowing out,” Servais said.

When Gilbert jogged to the mound Friday in Cleveland, the temperature at first pitch was 41 degrees with frigid winds blowing in off Lake Erie. He slogged his way through four pitch-filled innings, allowing three runs on six hits with two walks and six strikeouts. In the last two innings he struggled to keep his misses anywhere near the strike zone, and the velocity on his pitches was down 3-4 mph.

When he jogged to the mound Wednesday, the temperature had risen to 79 degrees, and it felt warmer. His velocity was back to normal standards (95-96 mph on his fastball), and his command was better. Was it the sunshine or the midweek work on his mechanics?

“I did feel better out there,” he said. “I don’t know what to attribute it to. It’s nice when it’s a little warmer, but I felt like I just simplified things throughout the week during my bullpen. I tried to add a little more tempo (to his delivery). I tried get things going, move a little faster and keep my direction online. ”

Gilbert’s one run allowed came in the first inning. He gave up a pair of singles to Nico Hoerner and Nick Madrigal to start the game. But he limited the damage to just a sacrifice fly from Cody Bellinger. The Bellinger fly out started a string of 13 hitters retired. Gilbert allowed just three base runners after the first inning – a single to Miles Mastrobuoni in the fifth, a leadoff single to Bellinger in the seventh and a two-out walk to Patrick Wisdom, which ended his outing.

“They were really aggressive out of the gate,” Gilbert said. “I have to give (catcher) Cal (Raleigh) a ton of credit. He was really creative back there in mixing it up giving them different looks. Since they were aggressive, I tried to be aggressive back and just put it in the zone and challenge them.”

The Mariners picked up a pair of runs off Cubs starter Marcus Stroman in the third inning . J.P. Crawford led off with a single and scored on Eugenio Suarez’s single to right. Hernandez gave Seattle the lead with a single up the middle. The Mariners pushed it to 3-1 in the seventh when Ty France, who had six hits in 12 at-bats in the series, singled home Crawford.

Then came the homer barrage in the eighth against Cubs reliever Julian Merryweather.

Though the two solo homers were essentially insurance runs, the display of power and the two hitters make them notable.

Hernandez has had an up-and-down start with his new team this season and has hit several balls hard that have been outs. But there was no catching the homer he hit to deep left-center field. It had a 109-mph exit velocity with a 27-degree launch angle and traveled 419 feet. With a little more loft, the ball could’ve ended up on the street behind the left-field wall.

It was an impressive homer and the hardest-hit ball of the game.

Well, that was until Kelenic stepped to the plate and worked a 2-0 count against Merryweather.

With his simple strategy of “be on time for the fastball” and stay up the middle, he did both .

Merryweather fired a 98-mph fastball to the bottom part of the strike zone, and Kelenic jumped on the mistake, sending a blast deep into the upper deck of center field. Cubs center fielder Cody Bellinger took two cursory steps but knew that ball was on a route for Lake Michigan.

“I just got a pitch right where I was looking for it and was on time for it,” he said. “I’m comfortable. My biggest thing is just trying to catch the ball out in front of the plate, be on time for the fastball and react to everything else.”

MLB Statcast measured the blast at 482 feet with a 112-mph exit velocity. It was the longest ball hit in a regular-season game at Wrigley since at least 2015.

It is also the longest Mariners homer recorded by Statcast tracking, surpassing the two 470-foot homers hit by Mike Zunino.

It was also Kelenic’s third consecutive game with a homer. On this road trip he hit a line drive off the wall in Cleveland that was about a foot short of being a homer and a 410-foot double off the rail of the net above the wall in center field at Wrigley.

“That’s the Jarred I know and I’ve seen since Low-A,” Gilbert said. “It was the same thing with Cal coming up and seeing him explode on the scene. It’s just really fun, because Jarred is just a solid guy, and he deserves the world cause he works so hard. What he’s doing, to hit a bomb like that was crazy seeing that off the bat.”

But had he seen him a 482-foot homer before?

“Maybe farther,” Gilbert said, laughing. “I wouldn’t put it past him.”