Dominic Canzone blasts tying homer after call up, Mariners still lose to Diamondbacks in extra innings

PHOENIX – Welcome back to the show, Dominic Canzone. And welcome back to the Seattle Mariners.

With one big swing, Canzone, who was called up after fellow outfielder Leody Taveras was designated for assignment Monday, turned a deary Mariners loss into a 4-4 tied game in the ninth inning. The Mariners would go on to lose to the Arizona Diamondbacks 8-4 in 11 innings.

Josh Naylor delivered the final blow with a walk-off grand slam after Seattle was held scoreless in the 10th and 11th innings.

The comeback started while the Mariners were scoreless and down to their final out. Dylan Moore walked to start an improbable rally, followed by RBI singles from Donovan Solano and Cole Young.

Enter Canzone.

The former Diamondback, who came into the game as a pinch hitter in the seventh inning, worked a full count. On the sixth pitch, he sent a towering shot 450 feet into the right field seats.

Canzone flipped his bat and adimired his work, before turning to the Mariners dugout egging on more.

JP Crawford and Julio Rodriguez kept the rally alive with two more singles, but Cal Raleigh grounded out to the catcher, keeping the score tied at 4-all. And there would be no more for the Mariners.

Seattle closer Andres Munoz came in to work a scoreless ninth to send the game into extras. Carlos Vargas pitched a clean 10th, before giving up the grand slam to Naylor.

Struggling Taveras DfA’d

Taveras was let go following an underwhelming month in the lineup after he was claimed off waivers from Texas.

Taveras made his debut on May 7 on the road against the Athletics. His debut started with a game-tying RBI single and eventually scored what was the winning run in a 6-5 victory that day.

It didn’t get much better from there.

Taveras batted .174 with a .470 OPS in 28 games, which somehow were significantly worse numbers than he had in the first 30 games with the Rangers and led to his release from Texas. Taveras homered twice and doubled three times and had nine RBI with the M’s; he also struck out 27 times in 98 plate appearances and walked only three times.

“Leody is a very talented player and has a lot of tools. I think offensively it was a little inconsistent,” M’s manager Dan Wilson said. “Dom’s been swinging it so a chance to get Dom up here and get him some at-bats and see how it goes.”

The Mariners could have lasted a little longer with the shaky bat, but Taveras’ defensive metrics per FanGraphs were the worst of his career. The breaking point seemed to come on Saturday night in Anaheim when Taveras was a midgame replacement for Julio Rodríguez in center field after Rodríguez was hit on the ankle by a batted ball and left the game for treatment.

Immediately, the first ball was hit at Taveras and he clearly wasn’t ready, making a bad read and compounding what should have been an out by letting the ball ricochet off his body for an error. Later in the same inning, Taveras called off right fielder Miles Mastrobuoni to try for a leaping grab at the wall in right-center field, only to fail in making that catch.

Per FanGraphs, Taveras had a (negative)-1.0 fWAR in his 28 games with the M’s and a 32 wRC+ where 100 is league average.

It was a gamble when the Mariners claimed Taveras because it came with financial ramifications to what already was a tightly held budget from ownership. The M’s were on the hook for the remainder of his $4.75 million contract for this season, which was around $3.5 million.

With the Rainiers, Canzone hit .296 with 13 home runs, 36 RBI and a .924 OPS in 45 games. Canzone was sixth in the Pacific Coast League in homers and ninth in OPS.

Taxi squad addition

Logan Evans was an unexpected sight in the Mariners clubhouse on Monday as he was brought up from Tacoma on a precautionary basis and added to the M’s taxi squad.

As of now, it’s just precautionary, according to Wilson. But it was notable that when all the starting pitchers were on the field playing catch before batting practice, Bryce Miller was not part of the group.

Miller is schedule to start Wednesday’s series finale.

“Good to see him too back here, but just have him here as a precaution,” Wilson said.