BALTIMORE – Eugenio Suárez couldn’t have asked for his return to Seattle to go better, with one exception.

BALTIMORE – Put enough stress on your pitchers to be perfect and eventually something is going to break.

Saturday, 4:16 p.m., Scoreboard control room at T-Mobile Park.

BALTIMORE – By this point of his career, George Kirby has made enough starts and amassed enough evidence that conclusions can start to be drawn.

Given the length of a Major League Baseball season — 162 games over a six-month span — the endless variances in performance from players and teams and the changes in personnel due to injury or attrition, the oft-used cliché — “it’s not only who you are playing but when you are playing them” is relied upon often by players, coaching staffs and front offices when analyzing schedules and results.

SEATTLE – Less than 24 hours after having his No. 51 jersey officially retired and delivering a speech that left the Mariners’ first sellout crowd of the season chanting his name and endlessly applauding him, Ichiro spoke to the media Sunday morning to talk about a weekend that celebrated his legacy.

SEATTLE – As Adrian Houser’s pitch count steadily climbed from a lot to absurd in the first inning, and the large crowd at T-Mobile Park basked in the endless Sunday afternoon sunshine, having already witnessed Ichiro throw out the ceremonial first pitch to Randy Johnson, Cal Raleigh hit his 45th homer of the season – a two-run laser to right – and a two-run single from Eugenio Suárez, an easy, drama-free victory and a series sweep of the Rays seemed inevitable.

The grass surrounding the mound was littered with Mariners icons before a single pitch was thrown. The players that go by a singular word or nickname. Junior. Felix. The Big Unit. Bone. Edgar.

Ichiro’s induction in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown will be immortalized with the fourth statue to be installed at T-Mobile Park.

After three decades, Jay Buhner still said it best: Fudge the wild card. (Only, to reference Ralphie in “A Christmas Story”: he didn’t say “fudge.”)

With the Mariners trailing by two runs in the bottom of the eighth inning, Cal Raleigh turned on a 2-0 sweeper from Tampa Bay Rays reliever Griffin Jax and blasted it 417 feet out to right-center field, sending the Mariners to a 3-2 come-from-behind victory in their series opener.