Julio Rodriguez’s 4-Hit Finding New Ways To Win

On brand for a stressful series, the Mariners ultimately pulled away to a 6-5 victory on Wednesday night at Kauffman Stadium by giving the troublesome Royals a taste of their own medicine.

Dylan Moore was only in a position to score the winning run after he tagged up on Teoscar Hernández’s flyout in foul area after reaching on a fielding error to start the inning. And Julio Rodriguez finished off a season-high four-hit night by driving in a crucial insurance run with an opposite-field single in the ninth to enable Matt Brash complete the game despite allowing a leadoff home ball in his first appearance since Monday’s agonising missed save.

With the victory, Seattle closed the gap on the Blue Jays, who lost to Philadelphia earlier in the day, for the third and final AL Wild Card slot, which is now only one game away.

Rodrguez, who also swiped his 29th and 30th bases, remarked, “We’re driven. “We are aware that there is work to be done and that we must finish it; we understand that it won’t just happen and that we must act. We must not become stale.

The offensive resilience that the Mariners mostly lacked in the first half again proved crucial on a night where they again went out to an early lead only to watch K.C. level it.

Moore gave them the lead by just barely avoiding a tag from Royals catcher Salvador Perez, which prompted a challenge that affirmed the first decision. The utility player entered the game as a pinch-hitter in the previous inning, but his at-bat was cut short when José Caballero was picked off first base. Thus, he singled to start the eighth, moved to second on an error, stole third, and then scored on a line drive from Eugenio Suárez, who also made two crucial and amazing outs in the field.

Moore declared, “I’m definitely tagging no matter what. It’s foul.” “It’s a little bit of a funny angle as it gets closer and closer to the barrier there, the tarp over there. I wanted to go more in my head as he got closer. I quickly took off as soon as he caught it. There is none.

On Wednesday, there was just enough pitching to lead to 27 outs. Even though Luis Castillo struggled with early decreased fastball velocity and strong contact because of placements over the plate, he managed to get out of the seventh for a badly taxed bullpen. In his return to Kansas City, where he spent four seasons as a reliever, Gabe Speier then managed to go around a walk with two outs and a stolen base to get out of the eighth.

To stay up to date on the newest Major League Baseball hot topics, sign up to receive our daily Morning Lineup.

After allowing the No. 8 hitter Nelson Velázquez to open his at-bat with a booming, 386-foot home run, Brash finished his at-bat by retiring his next three batters in order.

We can mess some [things] up, but we don’t give up, as manager Scott Servais noted the previous night when they barely escaped with a victory in the 10th inning.

The Mariners have played some peculiar games at this location, with perhaps their worst defeat of 2022 coming on Sept. 25, when they lost a nine-run lead in a 13-12 game. On Monday, they were held hitless through the seventh inning before rallying for a late lead and losing it when Brash blew what may have been the team’s toughest save opportunity of the year in the walk-off. Similar things were about to happen on Tuesday when they blew leads of 7-0 and 8-5 before Ty France silenced the crowd with a two-out, go-ahead hit to secure a 10-8 victory.

Seattle is three games into a schedule that features 13 of 16 games versus losers, but this week’s series against a team 44 games below.500 has served as a reminder that navigating an MLB schedule is seldom as easy as it seems.

Using an interpreter, Castillo said of the Royals, “It’s a Major League team, they’re at a high level compared to all the other 29 teams.” There is therefore no “easy team” for me.

After their overwhelming victory over Baltimore last Friday, Seattle’s postseason odds from FanGraphs dropped from a season-high 43.6% to 34.8% as of Wednesday. Based on computations that combine different projection techniques scaled with more than 10,000 simulations using the real remaining schedule, the odds are determined.

The remaining schedule is a crucial factor in determining those odds, and among their final 42 games, the.481 opponents’ winning % is the sixth-lowest (or “easiest”) remaining. However, odds are still just odds, so the Mariners must continue to play well. Furthermore, they shut the door too late on Wednesday.