Mariners’ stars align as Julio Rodriguez, Cal Raleigh power comeback over Astros

HOUSTON — Three first pitches. Three first-pitch swings. Three home runs.

Who says you need to have long, drawn out at-bats and work the count at the plate.

“You just have to be ready. You never know when you’re going to get that pitch to hit,” M’s catcher Cal Raleigh said. “I know for myself it’s always been trying to stay aggressive and being ready to go from the first pitch, because that could be the one that could change a game like tonight, for instance. You obviously saw it with all of us.”

The Mariners again relied on the long ball Friday night, this time hitting three homers on their way to a 5-3 win over the Astros in the second game of their four-game series before 34,664 at Daikin Park.

What made these three homers unique was the Mariners didn’t wait around. Leody Taveras homered on the first pitch of the third inning. Miles Mastrobuoni homered on the first pitch of the fifth inning, an opposite-field fly ball that only would have been a home run in Houston thanks to the Crawford Boxes in left field.

But the biggest blow, and most majestic, came off the bat of Raleigh.

With two outs in the seventh inning, Julio Rodríguez — back in the lineup after being scratched Thursday due to tightness in his back — lined a game-tying double into the right-field corner and J.P. Crawford was able to skirt around from first base to score and pull the Mariners even at 3-3. It was a risky send by third-base coach Kristopher Negrón, but proved to be the right one. It also made up for an inning earlier when Negrón sent Raleigh after Taveras singled and watched the catcher get thrown out by 15 feet by left fielder Jose Altuve — which will forever be a strange sight after all his years at second base.

“I’m just trying to get something that I could drive, and I feel like I was able to recognize that heater and be able to drive it the other way,” said Rodríguez, who showed up early to get treatment Friday and made sure to compliment the athletic training staff getting him ready to play.

There was barely any time to react to Rodríguez’s 108 mph line drive before Bryan Abreu’s next pitch, which was a slider that Raleigh attacked. And he attacked it almost too much as it curved down the right-field line and flirted with curving too much before catching a glancing blow off the foul pole.

For a moment, it appeared Raleigh’s moonshot had hit the cow — yes a cow — that’s atop the right-field foul pole as part of an advertisement for Chick-fil-A. Unfortunately, it didn’t hit the cow, but clanged off the yellow body of the foul pole.

“I didn’t know what it hit, I just hoped it stayed fair,” Raleigh said.

“I couldn’t tell what it hit, but it doesn’t matter at this point,” manager Dan Wilson said.

“It was so high, it just launched. I was, ‘just catch a piece of it,’ and seeing that it did, that was pretty cool,” starting pitcher Emerson Hancock said.

His 17th homer vaulted Raleigh back into the American League lead and vaulted the Mariners to their sixth win in the first eight games of this road trip. It was also his 11th go-ahead home run in the seventh inning or later since the start of the 2022 season — the most in baseball.

“I think it’s just trusting it. Trusting what kind of player you are, and you got to understand yourself and understand what works for you in those big moments,” Raleigh said. “Because the heart rate goes up and the game can speed up on you, and just understanding that really we just need a hit. We don’t really need to try to get a homer, but, you know, those things happen.”

It also made a winner out of Hancock on a night he pitched well enough to deserve the victory. Building on his previous start last weekend in San Diego, Hancock (2-2) tossed six innings and while he allowed nine hits he limited the damage to three runs.

Two of those runs came on Isaac Paredes’ homer into the Crawford Boxes, a fly ball that would have only been a homer in Houston and at Fenway Park. The Astros added another on Christian Walker’s sacrifice fly, although Hancock may have escaped that jam had a borderline pitch to the previous batter Yainer Diaz been called a strike by home plate umpire Brian O’Nora.

Hancock struck out three and didn’t walk a batter. He also saw a jump in velocity in his sinker and four-seam fastball, and topped out at 97.4 mph.

“It gives you a little more room for error. A little bit quicker decision time for them,” Hancock said. “It’s also nice to be able to have it when you need it.”

But Hancock’s effort was strong enough the Mariners could turn to their leverage arms of Matt Brash in the seventh and Carlos Vargas in the eighth. Houston pieced together a pair of two-out singles off Vargas, but Jeremy Peña hit into a force out to end the inning.

Then it was time for Andrés Muñoz, who retired Paredes, Altuve and Diaz for his 17th save and has still not allowed an earned run in 23 appearances.

Taveras’ homer was his second in three games and part of a three-hit game as the M’s continued to get contributions from the bottom of the batting order. Mastrobuoni’s homer was just the second of his career, with his only other one coming in July 2023 at Wrigley Field while playing for the Cubs.

But when it mattered, the stars that needed to deliver for the M’s came through. First Rodríguez and then Raleigh.

“He’s definitely having a lot of success for us,” Rodríguez said of his teammate.