To avoid suffering an embarrassing three-game series sweep and let the season-opening homestand devolve from bad to awful, the Mariners simply have to find a way to beat the Tigers, something they’ve done once in their last eight meetings.
So, who will they be facing on Wednesday afternoon at T-Mobile Park to try to salvage a win?
Oh, just some guy named Tarik Skubal.
Sound familiar?
Yes, the same Tarik Skubal, who was the unanimous winner of the AL Cy Young last season after posting an 18-4 record with a 2.39 ERA while striking out 228 batters.
The Mariners knew the hard-throwing lefty and former Seattle University star was looming in the series finale, but still couldn’t find a way to win either of the first two games of the three-game set vs. Detroit, including Tuesday’s forgettable 4-1 loss.
Seattle mustered only one hit on the chilly spring evening while falling to 2-4 on the season.
“A difficult one tonight,” said manager Dan Wilson. “We couldn’t get anything going offensively.”
Yes, they got one hit and six total base runners in nine innings.
Of their six games this season, the Mariners have been held to two runs or fewer in four of those games.
That one hit came from their first plate appearance of the game.
Victor Robles led off the bottom of the first with a crisp single to right off Detroit starter Casey Mize. He advanced to second on Cal Raleigh’s walk. Both runners moved up a base on Randy Arozarena’s ground out. But when Luke Raley struck out, the Mariners’ best and only scoring opportunity against Mize and over the first seven innings ended.
Mize, a No. 1 overall pick in 2018, has battled elbow and back issues, requiring surgeries for both injuries that caused him to basically miss the 2022 and 2023 seasons. Last season, he posted a 2-6 record with a 4.49 ERA in 20 starts and two relief appearances.
In his first start of 2025, he pitched 5 2/3 scoreless innings, allowing the one hit with three walks and five strikeouts. After walking Raleigh in the first inning, he retired the next 14 hitters in a row.
The Mariners didn’t quite get the same performance from Logan Gilbert, who was the 14th overall pick in that same draft. The lanky right-hander was better than his line score of five innings pitched, three runs allowed on five hits with a walk and 10 strikeouts.
“It was a night where we needed him to go deep and he really got us to where we needed to be,” Wilson said. “He still wanted to go more. He was determined to get us through six.”
Dealing with some unexpected contact on his slider — one of his best pitches — early on, Gilbert had to battle through the early innings, sapping his pitch count.
With one out in the first inning, Riley Greene stayed on a low 3-2 slider in the bottom of the strike zone, doubling to right. He later scored when Kerry Carpenter continued his career-long torture of the Mariners. The lefty-swinging platoon player sliced a two-out single to right field to score Greene for an early 1-0 lead. Carpenter was able to advance to second on the play following a poor throw home from Robles.
That loomed large when Colt Keith followed with a single to left on a slider he could handle, allowing Carpenter to score and make it 2-0.
The Tigers tacked on another run in the third inning. Zach McKinstry led off with a single on a slider and scored when Spencer Torkelson ambushed a first-pitch fastball, doubling over Robles’ head in right field to drive in another run.
Of the 14 sliders he threw in the game, the Tigers put six in play, including four hits. Gilbert thought it was odd and checked the data on the pitches postgame.
“It actually felt pretty good,” he said. “And I wondered that after the game, too. I went back on video, and I thought it looked really good. The action was good. Pretty much all their hits on the sliders were on the edges, except for one, the weakest hit, which wasn’t on the edge.”
It was the last hit Gilbert would allow. He retired the next nine batters he faced, striking out seven of them. He also threw only one more slider after allowing the leadoff single to McKinstry the remainder of his outing. Instead, he turned to his split-finger fastball and curveball to combat the array of lefty hitters he was facing.
“I thought that before the game, too,” Gilbert said. “I noticed a lot of lefties in the lineup. But the splitter has been feeling good, so I knew we were going to go to that quite a bit. I have a bunch of good options but I never want to shy away from throwing the slider. I have a ton of confidence in that. But if a team is looking for one pitch, the curve worked really well because I think they were looking slider down, and it had more depth when they see spin out of the hand.”
The Mariners’ only run came in the seventh inning. Arozarena worked a leadoff walk against Beau Brieske. He advanced to second on a wild pitch and moved to third on Raley’s ground ball. With one out, Rowdy Tellez hit a line drive to left field that was caught by a sliding McKinstry. Arozarena was still able to tag up and sprint home for the Mariners’ only run.
Detroit got that run back almost immediately when Greene led off the top of the eighth with an opposite-field solo homer off Trent Thornton that made it 4-1.
