Cal Raleigh homers twice, Luis Castillo goes six strong as Mariners continue to dominate Guardians
CLEVELAND – Well, on the bright side for the Cleveland Guardians none of their pitchers punched the mound or any other objects in anger in another loss to the Mariners.
Though the frustrations from failures for Cleveland are somewhat understandable when it comes to playing Seattle.
With a decisive 6-1 victory that didn’t feel even that close, the Mariners have defeated the Guardians four times in their past five meetings.
Seattle improved to 74-58 on the season but didn’t pull away in the American League wild-card race with the Rays (73-57) trouncing the Yankees 9-0 and the Blue Jays (71-59) shutting out the Pirates 4-0.
While the first four games of this season series were competitive, Friday night’s game at a less-than-full Progressive Field with an announced crowd of 21,923 had minimal drama due to the brilliant pitching of Luis Castillo, the power of Cal Raleigh and the repercussions of Cleveland’s aggravation.
About five hours before first pitch, right-handed pitcher Zach Plesac, who was scheduled to start for Cleveland, was placed the 15-day injured list with a fracture in his pitching hand.
While Plesac told Cleveland reporters that he wasn’t sure how he suffered the injury, manager Terry Francona intimated that the injury occurred when Plesac punched the pitcher’s mound of T-Mobile Park after serving up a massive solo homer to Jake Lamb on Aug. 27 – the one game Cleveland has won in the season series.
With Plesac unable to go, pitching prospect Cody Morris, who was called up with roster expansion, was inserted into the starting spot to make his MLB debut in what was expected to be a bullpen game. Morris had been working out of the bullpen in Triple-A and had only been built up to 60 pitches.
The Mariners scored three runs off Morris in his two innings, with Mitch Haniger ripping a pair of RBI doubles off the rookie and Raleigh added his first of two homers on the night.
“There’s so much info out there even in the minor leagues these days so we still had an idea of what it’s just kind of like,” Raleigh said of the pitching change. “You just go back to travel ball where you just go and show up and say, ‘I’ll go with my approach today and we’ll see what happens.’ That kind of worked out today.”
It really worked out when Raleigh broke the game open in the sixth inning, smashing a three-run homer to deep right-center off Bryan Shaw to make it 6-0.
“Wow, Cal Raleigh, 21 homers,” manager Scott Servais said. “It’s some kind of season he’s putting together.”
Raleigh is the third Mariners catcher to hit 20-plus homers in a season.
Mike Zunino did it three times (22 in 2014, 25 in 2017 and 20 in 2018) and Omar Narvaez clubbed 22 in 2019.
“If you look at how the season started for him and where he’s at right now, I don’t think you could have predicted this,” Servais said. “It was in there, but you just don’t know when it’s going to come out. I’m really, really proud of him. It’s not just the home runs and what he’s done offensively but the job he does behind the plate. He makes an impact every night whether he gets a hit or homer or not.”
Raleigh has improved his season slash line to .205/.277/.475 with 17 doubles, a triple, 21 homers, 49 RBIs, 30 walks and 98 strikeouts.
Castillo pitched six scoreless innings, allowing five hits with a walk, four strikeouts and a hit by pitch to improve to 2-1 with the Mariners.
In the back-to-back starts against the Guardians, he’s pitched 12 innings, allowing one run on eight hits with two walks and 14 strikeouts. A year ago, he made two starts against Cleveland, giving up 12 runs on 14 hits with five walks and four strikeouts in 7 1/3 innings pitched.
“What I liked the most is that we won,” Castillo said of his start through interpreter Freddie Llanos. “We won and it was important for us. And also the command that I had on the mound.”