Cal Raleigh sets Mariners home run record in blowout loss to Yankees

NEW YORK – Forget about what happened over the previous three weeks, because while winning 15 of the past 23 games helped stabilize the Mariners, it’s the next 12 games sandwiching the All-Star break that could drive the direction the rest of this season takes.

If the opening game of that 12-game stretch was an indication, it could be a long and somewhat strange couple of weeks on the horizon.

Stymied by a midgame rain delay, some poor pitching afterward and an absence of offense until it was too late, the Mariners lost to the New York Yankees 10-3 on Tuesday night in the opener of a three-game series before 38,641 at Yankee Stadium.

“I thought I was pretty good before and pretty bad after,” said M’s starter Logan Gilbert, who was part of the pitching that went wayward following the 35-minute rain delay.

The first game in New York kicked off the stretch of 12 straight all against teams that would be in the playoffs if the season ended Tuesday. The six before the break started in New York and include Detroit; after the break it’s at home against Houston and Milwaukee.

The first of those 12 tests was a blowout loss, with Cal Raleigh providing the only highlight. An inning after watching Aaron Judge hit his 34th homer of the season, Raleigh clubbed his 36th of the season in the eighth inning to set a franchise mark for the most homers before the All-Star break, passing Ken Griffey Jr.’s 35 homers in 1998.

Raleigh’s 36 home runs and 76 RBIs this season make him the fourth player – and first catcher – since 1933 to have at least 36 homers and 75 RBIs before the All-Star break. The others were Reggie Jackson (1969), Mark McGwire (1998) and Chris Davis (2013).

“Just to see what Cal continues to do, again, we’ve talked about it a lot, but it’s just been a pretty consistent half for him and continues to swing the bat well,” M’s manager Dan Wilson said. “Got a pitch he was able to drive tonight. It’s been unbelievable.”

Raleigh’s homer was the lone bright spot on a night when the weather played a major role.

The game stopped at 5:15 p.m. Pacific time as major storms blew through the area. The dark, ominous clouds eventually brought heavy rains and a light show in the skies outside the stadium with lightning bouncing through the clouds even after the game restarted.

There were even what sounded like fireworks being set off somewhere outside the stadium during the bottom of the fifth inning shortly after the game resumed.

Eventually, some of the thunder and lightning outside the ballpark made its way inside, but almost all of it was from the Yankees.

The rain delay derailed what seemed to be the best performance of the season from Gilbert – or at the very least his best since his stint on the injured list that cost him nearly two months of action.

Before the rain delay, Gilbert was nearly perfect, retiring 11 of the first 12 batters and not allowing a base runner until Cody Bellinger’s two-out single in the fourth inning. It was the only mistake he made in his first 51 pitches, a stretch that included strikeouts of Judge and Giancarlo Stanton on a pair of nasty splitters.

“The splitter was good with two strikes. Fastball was good early, getting ahead of some guys. Slider was in good spots, pretty much, up until the fifth or sixth there. And worked some curveballs in. So kind of had a good mix going,” Gilbert said.

After the break, Gilbert’s start quickly devolved as he struggled to regain the same velocity with his fastball and feel for his slider that he had before the rain. Gilbert recorded just five more outs and ended up allowing five runs and six hits over his final two innings of work.

“Execution-wise, just leaving pitches up. Slider up. Fastball, kind of spraying it a little bit. So just felt kind of off afterward,” Gilbert said.

Gilbert said he tried to stay warm in the batting cage throwing plyometric balls off the walls and some pitches in the batting cage. The length of the delay was short enough the M’s felt he could go back out for the fifth with his pitch count so low.

“My job is just to throw. Not worry about how long it is, or any of that stuff,” he said.

New York’s Paul Goldschmidt singled with one out in the fifth inning and came around to score when Oswald Peraza’s slow chopper into the hole between first and second wasn’t cleanly handled by Cole Young. Peraza was awarded an infield single and the Yankees had a 1-0 lead.

But the sixth inning is where it quickly got away from Gilbert. Judge ripped a leadoff single and Bellinger followed with his second hit. Judge hit a fastball and Bellinger hit a slider, and both were left in the middle of the plate.

That was the precursor as Gilbert missed with another slider in the middle and Stanton clubbed a three-run shot for a 4-0 lead.

“It’s a good hitting lineup. We know that. And then they have power and they were able to get a couple,” Wilson said.

Stanton’s homer was the first of three the Yankees hit. Austin Wells hit the first pitch from Casey Legumina 414 feet for a two-run homer and a 6-0 lead.

Judge homered an inning later off Legumina, taking advantage of the short porch in right field with a homer that per MLB Statcast would have been a home run in only eight parks in baseball.

Legumina allowed five runs and five hits in his one inning of relief work.

‘Sauce’ returns, but just in case

Tayler Saucedo was back in the Mariners’ clubhouse, but just protectively.

Saucedo was added to the taxi squad before the series opener in New York on the chance reliever Carlos Vargas may need to go on the paternity list at some point in the next several days.

Saucedo hasn’t pitched for the M’s since April 26 when he was recalled from Triple-A Tacoma and made one appearance before being sent back down to the minors.

That was followed by a stint on the minor league injured list with a lat injury that had been bugging Saucedo since spring training.

Saucedo went about a month without throwing and had been working out in Arizona before rejoining the Rainiers a week ago. He appeared in a pair of games last week before flying in late Monday night to join the M’s.