Mariners’ offensive outburst enough to hold off Twins rally as Seattle grabs series win

MINNEAPOLIS – Is it finally happening?

After 3½ months of fits and starts, after 102 games of straddling the demarcation of being winning or a losing team, after losing the hope of a fanbase multiple times and then bringing them begrudgingly back with periodic stretches of good play, are the Mariners finally finding some traction to put a run together to push them closer to a return to the postseason?

It’s certainly trending in the right direction with Wednesday’s 8-7 victory over the Twins. After dropping the first game of the series, Seattle stormed back to win the next two and take the three-game series over Minnesota. The Mariners improved to 52-50 and still sit behind four teams for the third wild-card spot.

“Interesting series,” manager Scott Servais said. “Obviously, the Twins are one of the hottest teams in baseball coming out of the break, so to get in here and win two out of three is big. If you look at all three game, we could have won all three and we easily could have lost all three. But we end up winning the series and you feel good about it.”

But is it too late to convince management to invest in immediate help for this team?

That will be answered in the days ahead with the MLB trade deadline at 3 p.m. Tuesday.

After playing 13 games in 13 days coming out of the All-Star break, Seattle will have Thursday off before opening a three-game series in Phoenix vs. the Diamondbacks.

“We need an off day,” Servais said. “Our bullpen needs a reset. The guys are dragging a little bit with the heat out there today, but heck of effort. You’ve got to dig down on days like today and find a way. We got it done.”

With temperatures in the 90s and the humidity elevated after thunderstorms in the early morning hours, the afternoon affair featured plenty of offense and homers.

Using the rejuvenated offensive power production of Julio Rodriguez and Dylan Moore, the Mariners had just a little more than the Twins on the day.

Wait, Dylan Moore?

Moore hit a pair of homers and drove in four runs while Rodriguez had a pair of doubles and a solo homer to lead a Mariners offense that has looked productive in the past few days.

Seattle needed every one of those runs as the Twins stormed back late in the game, scoring four runs in the sixth inning and reducing an 8-3 lead to just one run.

But the heavily used Mariners bullpen was able to maintain the one-run lead with Gabe Speier, Justin Topa and Andres Munoz each working a scoreless inning to close out the win. Speier produced a 1-2-3 seventh, facing the Twins’ toughest lefty hitters. Topa worked a scoreless eighth. Munoz bounced back from a blown save in the series opener to work a scoreless ninth despite allowing the leadoff hitter to reach.

“They were outstanding today,” Servais said.

The Mariners made Twins All-Star starter Joe Ryan work in the 90-degree heat, fouling off borderline pitches and forcing him back into the strike zone.

Seattle hitters fouled off 25 pitches from Ryan. He threw 95 pitches in 3⅔ innings, giving up four runs on seven hits with two walks and seven strikeouts.

Rodriguez led off the game with a double to right-center and scored on Teoscar Hernandez’s broken-bat single to center.

Moore hit his first homer of the game, a line drive to left field that made it 2-0.

Rodriguez, who hit a pair of homers in Tuesday’s win, pushed the lead to 3-0 when he clubbed a solo homer into the upper deck in left. It was his 17th homer of the season.

The Mariners pushed the lead to 8-3 in the fifth inning against the Twins bullpen, highlighted by Moore’s three-run blast and RBI single from Eugenio Suarez.

“Dylan Moore had an unbelievable game,” Servais said. “For a guy who hasn’t played very much, you are starting to see it coming with his timing, his rhythm. I talked to him a few days ago. We’re gonna give him more opportunity to get more starts and he was huge today.”

After offseason surgery to repair a core muscle and an oblique strain caused him to miss spring training and more complications delayed his return to the season, Moore was activated from the injured list on June 5after a truncated rehab stint. He looked rusty and played sparingly for the first month of his return. Moore went hitless in his first 16 plate appearances before hitting a homer vs. the Yankees. That was followed by a stretch of 14 plate appearances without a hit.

“Getting timing in my role is definitely a little bit different,” he said. “I’ve just kind of got to rely on my preparation and my confidence comes from that. Definitely seeing more pitches regularly without a lot of delays helps.”

While he was trying to find timing, Moore also made some adjustments with his swing and approach to make him a more viable hitter against the fastballs at the top half of the zone.

“I’ve just been a little bit more aggressive with the fastball,” he said. “At times, I tried to see the ball maybe a little bit too deep, try to make sure it’s the exact right pitch to hit instead of just being a bit more aggressive on the fastballs. And today, at the very least, it’s allowed me to get on top of that pitch.”

Seattle got an uneven start from rookie Bryce Miller, who still got the win to improve to 7-3 on the season.

After allowing a pair of solo homers to Christian Vazquez and Edouard Julien in the third inning and another solo blast to Matt Wallner in the fourth inning, Miller started the sixth inning but couldn’t finish it.

With one out, he allowed another solo homer to Wallner – a towering opposite-field blast into the upper deck in left-center. Miller looked like he might get out of the inning when he got Willi Castro to fly out to center. But Trevor Larnach doubled to right-center and scored on Kyle Farmer’s hard single to right, ending Miller’s outing.

“They were just getting the ball in the air today and it was going,” he said. “So not an ideal game, not the ideal way to get a win, but we got one.”

Brought in to put an end to the rally, Matt Brash gave up a towering double to Joey Gallo that landed on the warning track that scored a run. Christan Vazquez followed with another single to score Gallo and cut the lead to 8-7.