Gilbert’s Gutsy Game and a Trio of Home Runs Give Mariners 2-0 ALCS Lead

On Friday night in Seattle, Logan Gilbert was on the mound gutting out two scoreless innings of relief a mere two days after he’d won the third game of the American League Division Series. That performance was do or die; hold the Tigers scoreless or head home for winter. The entire Mariners team contributed to that 15-inning win, never mind any knock-on effects for the pitching staff. A few days after that, on Monday in Toronto, Gilbert tried to reprise his heroic, short-rest effort against a relentless Blue Jays offense in Game 2 of the American League Championship Series.

The Mariners couldn’t expect to get a peak Gilbert start, so their bats had to put up enough runs to outrun the ongoing effects of the massive workload its pitching staff shouldered late last week. The offense delivered plenty of scoring, and the pitchers more than held their own despite the circumstances. When it was all settled in a 10-3 Seattle win, the Mariners were just two wins away from their first World Series appearance in franchise history.

In your average playoff game, a three-run home run in the top of the first inning feels backbreaking, but this was no ordinary affair. Facing Toronto rookie Trey Yesavage, who’d silenced the Yankees eight days earlier in his postseason debut, Randy Arozarena got hit by a pitch, Cal Raleigh walked, and then Julio Rodríguez clobbered a splitter to put the M’s way out in front.

In the bottom of the first, though, the enormity of the hill Seattle had to climb quickly became obvious. Gilbert came out and showed his entire arsenal right away, throwing George Springer a sampler platter of sliders and splitters that simply couldn’t miss a bat. By the time Springer ripped a 2-2 pitch foul, the Seattle bench looked worried. When Springer rocketed the next pitch off the left field wall, the consternation was already at a fever pitch.

Gilbert might have gotten away with a sloppy start, but Josh Naylor tried to make a near-impossible play on a Nathan Lukes grounder to first and tossed the ball away. Alejandro Kirk followed with a two-out single that brought the score to 3-2. By the time Gilbert slammed the door on the first inning, he’d tossed 19 pitches and missed exactly one bat.

A cursory look at Gilbert’s velocity would tell you that he was feeling no ill effects from his limited rest; he came out sitting 95-96, just like he has all year. But a closer look reveals the modern data-driven equivalent of a house of horrors. The velocity on that heater might have been unchanged, but the spin was down nearly 200 rpm, which means around five inches less induced movement. In other words, it was flat and hittable, and the Blue Jays took advantage. They swung at 17 fastballs and missed only twice. Even worse, it wasn’t fooling them; they swung at only 20% of fastballs outside the strike zone, but 88% of fastballs in it. In other words, they had no trouble figuring out where the ball was going or getting their bat to it.

Normally, that would be a survivable problem for Gilbert. He has a spectacular splitter, an excellent slider, and a big curveball he breaks out for special occasions. But his fatigue affected more than just his heater. His slider and splitter both lost as much spin as the four-seamer, and that lost spin changed their movement profiles from enticing to abysmal. His slider lost break in both directions, and opposing batters ran a 90% contact rate against it. His splitter is supposed to dive, but in his diminished form today, he was inducing six inches of positive vertical break instead of an inch of negative break, meaning the pitch fell a lot less than it usually does. He only threw a single curveball, which should tell you how he felt about that one; it fell nine inches less than his average curveball, and that was that.

Put all of this together, and Gilbert was pitching with the equivalent of at least one hand tied behind his back. He came back out for the second and labored again, throwing 27 pitches as he tried his hardest to navigate the dangerous top of the Toronto order, including an eight-pitch walk to Springer and a nine-pitch battle to retire Vladimir Guerrero Jr. In between, Lukes laced a line drive single to tie the game, and it felt like only a matter of time before the Jays broke through for even more. The third inning was Gilbert’s best yet, but even that was a struggle. He got only his second strikeout of the day when he hung a slider right down the pipe and Daulton Varsho missed it. Gilbert had only thrown 58 pitches, but he looked completely cooked.

The reliever who followed him into the game wasn’t exactly fresh as daisies. Eduard Bazardo got Sunday off, but he’d pitched every single game of the ALDS, including 2 2/3 innings and 39 pitches in the clincher. He came in with diminished stuff too, but luckily, his sinker/slider mix plays pretty well even with the volume turned down. He was trying to get grounders, not whiffs, and that plan works a lot better with diminished stuff than “make ‘em miss” does. The Jays were all over Bazardo, whiffing only once in 15 swings, but they repeatedly put the ball on the ground. Between the fourth and fifth, Bazardo faced seven batters and got five grounders. The other two at-bats ended in a strikeout and a lazy fly ball. Did he need a bit of BABIP luck to turn that into two scoreless innings? Sure, but that plan seemed a lot better than getting any more out of Gilbert.

The heroic effort by the Seattle pitchers would only matter if the bats could break through. Luckily, the Mariners offense has been one of the best in baseball all year. You might not realize it from the box scores, but it’s not their fault they play in offense-suppressing T-Mobile Park for half of their games; their 113 wRC+, which adjusts for stadium, trailed only the Yankees this year. In the top of the fifth inning, Arozarena reached on a single plus an error, which led the Jays to walk Raleigh intentionally. The problem with that move is that most of the Seattle lineup is a home run threat. The Jays brought in Louis Varland to try to quench the rally, but after fooling Rodríguez with a sneaky fastball down the middle for strike three, he tried the same trick against Jorge Polanco, who did what great hitters do to hittable fastballs. He took an enormous rip, his hardest swing of the game, and deposited the ball 400 feet away. Just like that, it was 6-3 Mariners, even though they’d been on the ropes and desperately seeking outs for seemingly the entire game.

Suddenly, the Blue Jays had a problem. They’d had two gift-wrapped chances to create offense against exhausted Mariners pitchers. They did alright against Gilbert, posting three runs in three innings, but I’m sure they were disappointed not to get more; the only extra-base hit they tallied was Springer’s game-opening double, and despite Gilbert’s complete inability to throw the ball past them, they didn’t put enough runners on base to break the game open. Bazardo’s two innings of relief might not be noticeable on an average night, but when you’re facing Seattle’s elite run prevention unit and grasping at any chance to break through, three runs in five innings against two exhausted guys isn’t going to do it.

I hope you’re not disappointed to see that the recap is nearly over after only five innings of action, but uh, this game was pretty much over too. The Mariners got into the soft part of the Toronto bullpen and went to work. Mason Fluharty allowed a run in a dicey appearance, which brought in Braydon Fisher against the top of the Seattle lineup in the sixth. After stringing together a few outs to escape that inning, he went and surrendered a two-run homer to Naylor. Yariel Rodríguez entered to clean up Fisher’s mess and got into a jam of his own by walking the first three batters he faced. After a sac fly put the Mariners into double digits, mopup man Chris Bassitt was in to wear the last few innings of the onslaught.

The Jays couldn’t even claim a moral victory at the end of the game. Seattle sent in Carlos Vargas and Emerson Hancock from the bulk-innings section of the bullpen. Those guys combined for negative WAR in the regular season, and Vargas had been scored on in each of his first two appearances of the playoffs while Hancock hadn’t appeared. The Jays managed exactly zero hits in four innings of work against those guys; despite four walks and only two strikeouts between them, they closed the game out without even a tiny bit of drama.

This series will resume on Wednesday in Seattle. By then, the Mariners pitchers will be at least close to rejuvenated. George Kirby will pitch on regular rest, and then Luis Castillo will be on regular rest for Game 4. Bryan Woo lurks in the wings for a late-series appearance. That should absolutely terrify the Blue Jays, who just struggled to score four runs in 18 innings against the “easy” part of the Seattle pitching staff. If this is what you manage against a compromised Gilbert, Bryce Miller on short rest, and the “B” relievers, that’s a bad sign for the next few games.

On the other hand, what a gutsy effort by Gilbert. This is probably the worst his stuff has ever been on a major league mound. It was jarring to watch. His splitter, in particular, looked like a shadow of its normally devastating self. Every time he risked throwing it in the strike zone, it was a hold-your-breath moment; the Blue Jays were taking big hacks and almost never coming up empty. But they ripped a ton of secondary pitches foul, way out in front of what would otherwise be crushable offerings, and seemed caught in between when he threw his bat-seeking fastball. It feels weird to call a three-runs-in-three-innings performance a huge win, but that’s what happened here. Gilbert showed up and didn’t have it, but he still did enough to help his team out.

The Mariners have played six games this postseason, and this was the worst starting pitcher performance of the group by a fair margin if you only look at the box score. If you take the degree of difficulty into account, though, it might be the best of them. The Mariners would have been happy getting out of Toronto with even a single win following their marathon ALDS victory. Instead, they’re heading back home up 2-0 in the ALCS because even when their pitchers don’t have their regular stuff, they’ve found a way to get the job done.