Cade Marlowe upstages Shohei Ohtani with 9th-inning grand slam as Mariners rally

ANAHEIM, Calif. – Shohei Ohtani continued his MVP-like dominance late Thursday, using his arm, his bat and, yes, his legs to help the Los Angeles Angels spoil a gem from the Mariners’ Bryan Woo.

Ohtani appeared to put the game out of reach in the bottom of the eighth inning, turning on an Isaiah Campbell inside fastball for a line-drive home run 390 feet out to right field.

Mariners rookie Cade Marlowe found a way to upstage baseball’s best player.

Marlowe hit a grand slam with one out in the ninth off Angels closer Carlos Estevez – a 405-foot blast to deep right field – to give the Mariners an unlikely 5-3 comeback victory at Angels Stadium to open a crucial four-game series between AL West rivals on the periphery of the wild-card playoff chase.

Marlowe is the first Mariners player with a go-ahead grand slam in the ninth (or later) with his team trailing since Richie Sexson on Sept. 19, 2005, at Toronto.

Estevez, trying to protect a 3-1 lead, walked Cal Raleigh and Ty France to start the ninth.

Dominic Canzone followed with a sharp single to load the bases with no outs.

Teoscar Hernandez struck out and Estevez and quickly got ahead of Marlowe 0-2 in the count with two swings on fastballs up in the zone.

Marlowe called timeout and then turned on a 99.8-mph fastball and sent it out to right.

The Mariners, at 57-52, moved 1½ games ahead of the Angels in the wild-card standings and sit just 2½ games back of Toronto for the third and final wild-card spot.

Ohtani, the pitcher, had to leave the game after four shutout innings because of a recurring cramp in his right hand.

As a slugger and as a runner, though, Ohtani sparked the Angels to a 3-1 lead in the eighth.

He scored the tying run after a crucial steal of second base in the sixth and homered in the eighth, his 40th of the season.

Rookie Bryan Woo pitched a gem for the Mariners, needing just 59 pitches to get through the first five innings in nearly flawless fashion. Woo got two quick outs to start the bottom of the sixth before falling behind 3-0 in the count to Ohtani.

That prompted Scott Servais to issue an intentional walk, a strategy the Mariners manager acknowledged before the game he would employ with the AL MVP front-runner.

It proved costly this time.

Ohtani stole second base and, on the next pitch, scored on C.J. Cron’s single up the middle that just skipped past a diving attempt by new Seattle second baseman Josh Rojas.

That tied the score at 1.

Cron scored the go-ahead run on a Mike Moustakas’ double into he right-center gap.

What’s notable about that – and, no doubt, especially irritating for Woo – is Moustakas’ double came right after home-plate umpire Paul Clemons issued a pitch-clock violation against Woo.

It appeared Woo had started his delivery just a tick after the in-stadium clock ran out.

The automatic ball pushed the count to 3-2 and, with two outs, allowed Cron to take a running start off first base.

It’s unlikely the burly slugger would have scored from first if not for the head start.

Moustakas’ double was just the fourth hit Woo allowed, and the only extra-base hit he gave up in six innings.

Eugenio Suarez had given the Mariners a 1-0 lead with a leadoff homer in the top of the sixth inning off Angels reliever Jose Soriano, an opposite-field shot to right.

It was Suarez’s 16th homer of the season and team-leading 70th RBI.

Suarez has driven in a run in nine consecutive games, tying Edgar Martinez’s franchise record.

Ohtani mysteriously left the game after just 59 pitches over four scoreless innings.

The Angels later announced that he had a cramp in his right hand/fingers, an issue he’s been dealing with in recent weeks.

The Mariners failed to capitalize on a prime scoring opportunity in the top of the first inning.

J.P. Crawford led off the game with a sharp single and Julio Rodriguez reached on a Cron throwing error, putting runners at the corners with no outs.

But Ohtani got Suarez to pop out, struck out Cal Raleigh and got Ty France to hit into a soft groundout to end the threat.

In the fifth inning, with runners again at the corners, Soriano struck out Rodriguez on three pitches to strand the runners.