Kyle Seager’s 9th inning home run helps Mariners beat Orioles 8-7 in 11 innings
BALTIMORE — They had every reason to feel deflated and beaten. Poised for a win, they watched a hitter who is considered statistically one of the worst in baseball this season, crush a three-run homer out of Camden Yards to take a lead going into the ninth inning.
But like they’ve done so many times this season, 23 times now to be exact, the Mariners found a way to come back and win on a sticky Wednesday night.
Kyle Seager hit a two-run homer off a tough left-handed reliever that just doesn’t give up homers to left-handed hitters to tie the score in the ninth inning to send the game into extra innings.
From there, Seattle remained perfect in extra-inning games. Jean Segura led off the top of the 11th with a double, advanced to third on Seager’s third hit of the night — a single to right field — and scored on Denard Span’s sac fly to center field off lefty Donnie Hart.
Edwin Diaz closed out the Mariners’ 8-7 win over the Orioles, notching his 30th save. Diaz surpassed Kazu Sasaki’s record of 29 saves before the All-Star break. He’s the 12th pitcher in Major League Baseball history to notch 30 saves before the break.
“I didn’t know about the record until I saw it on Twitter last night,” Diaz said.
The Mariners are now 7-0 in extra-inning games and 25-11 in one-run games this season. Oh, and they improved to 50-31 at the halfway point of the season, meaning they are on pace for 100 wins.
Raise your hand if you expected that coming into this season.
“We’ve had some great wins this year,” manager Scott Servais. “We’ve done a lot of it at home. But to do this on the road and come back after giving up the big homer in the eighth inning, this is just kind of how we are wired. We play all 27 outs, our guys don’t quit and we find a way.”
On this night, the Mariners needed 33 outs, but after 24 outs they appeared to be beaten in somewhat unbelievable fashion.
With a 5-4 lead, Servais turned to setup man Alex Colome to pitch the eighth inning as he did the night before. But this time Colome couldn’t produce another scoreless frame.
He gave up a pair of singles to start the inning. After retiring the next two batters on sharply hit balls, Colome served up a three-run homer to Chris Davis, who had struggled to even put the ball in play for most of the series or the season. Davis came into the game batting .147 with five homers and 96 strikeouts in 251 plate appearances. In the first two games of the series, he’d struck out six times in seven plate appearances. But Colome fell behind 3-1 in the count and left a very hittable cut fastball over the inner half of the plate. Davis crushed it deep over the wall in right and out of the stadium and on to Eutaw Street for a 7-5 lead.
“Even after he hit the homer, I was telling guys in the bullpen that this game isn’t over,” Diaz said.
The closer was right.
Facing All-Star closer and nasty left-hander Zach Britton, Mitch Haniger singled to start the ninth. Seager worked a 2-0 count and then yanked a two-run homer to right field to tie it at 7-7.
“You are just trying to get him in the air,” Seager said. “I got ahead, but you certainly aren’t thinking home run right there. Usually with a big sinker guy like that, if you think ‘get it in the air,’ you’ll at least hit a hard ground ball. Fortunately, it worked out.”
It was just the second homer that Britton had allowed to a left-handed hitter in his last 250 appearances. But it was Seager’s second career homer off him. He got Britton in 2012.
“Yeah, that was a long time ago,” Seager said. “He’s one of the best for a reason. His stuff is unbelievable with all the sink he’s got on it.”
The Mariners went from behind to bedlam in the dugout.
“We just keep fighting,” Span said. “In 10 years, I don’t know if I’ve ever been on a ballclub like this the way we keep scratching out victories. Resilient. When Davis hit the home run, that sunk our ship a little bit, but the character of this club is to keep playing and see what happens.”
The Orioles took three leads in the game, and the Mariners rallied from each of them.
Ryon Healy clubbed a solo homer to deep center field in the second inning to cut the lead in half. Segura led off the third inning with a hustling double to center. He later scored on an RBI single from Span.
The Orioles picked up two runs off Seattle starter Wade LeBlanc in the third inning. Another former Mariner, Mark Trumbo, lined a single to left field to score Adam Jones, yes, a former Mariner, while Manny Machado, who fans wish was a Mariner, scored on a throwing error by Span to make it 4-2.