Jorge Polanco puts in early Comeback Player of the Year award submission as Mariners defeat A’s on Opening Day, 4-2

Logan Logans, Mariners Mariner (complimentary)

The Mariners won their 16th Opening Day game since 2005, making them the winningest team on Opening Day during that span. But they didn’t make it easy on fans. The night got off to a strange note—literally, as the national anthem seemed to be played on a badly tuned guitar by two people who seemed to have just met a few minutes pregame, sorry to both the Head and the Heart.

In the first inning, in a 1-1 count, Julio got a hold of a 96 mph sinker on the plate and put a good swing on it—only for it to slice away foul. The cheers turned to groans, and he’d go on to strike out. Similarly, Randy Arozarena scalded a ball (112.3 mph EV), but Max Muncy was there to snag it. That set the tone for a frustrating night at the park, as the Mariners failed to get anything going offensively.

Severino was wild, but the Mariners weren’t able to punish him. They had a little something brewing in the second, when Jorge Polanco recorded the Mariners’ first hit of the season, as well all predicted, a well-struck single. Severino then hit Rowdy Tellez, because apparently Ty France forgot to remove all the baseball magnets from the 23 jerseys before leaving town. (Another funny aside, Tellez has taken over France’s locker in the clubhouse, as the parallels keep paralleling.) But Ryan Bliss grounded into a double play to quell that threat.

Maybe the sourest note of the night was at the end of the third inning, when Logan Gilbert was struck in the gluteal area by a comebacker 111 mph off the bat from Lawrence Butler. Gilbert recovered and made the inning-ending play, but Eduard Bazardo was seen warming between innings. Gilbert had been stellar up to that point, giving up just one hit to already-annoying Jacob Wilson and striking out three.

Gilbert quickly put to rest any concerns about his health, coming back with one of his most dominant innings yet with two more strikeouts. Five strikeouts through four innings is the most for a Mariners Opening Day starter since Félix Hernández in 2017. Gilbert would add another in the fifth inning, getting Max Muncy swinging after a splitter to end the fifth, but also gave up a solo home run that inning, hanging a slider to Tyler Soderstrom that the slugger jumped on for a first-pitch home run.

The Mariners had another chance in the sixth. With one out, Arozarena worked a walk and Luke Raley dumped a little parachute base hit into center. The only Mariner with a hit so far other than Raley, Jorge Polanco, then chose to drop a sacrifice bunt—his first since 2020, per stats guru Alex Mayer, who had to have been sitting on that one for a while—to move the runners up, but also bring Rowdy Tellez up with two outs. Once again, the fans waited with bated breath, and once again, a Mariners hitter failed to come through, as Tellez was punched out looking on a nasty sweeper. It’s hard to fault Rowdy for the strikeout, as it was a true pitcher’s pitch, but not hard to fault Polanco, who apparently saw something he thought would work to his advantage and made the call on his own.

“We will have a conversation about it,” said Dan Wilson postgame.

There was one more chance for the team to not hand Logan an undeserved L on Opening Day. In the bottom of the seventh inning, Bliss and Crawford worked back-to-back walks off new A’s reliever Tyler Ferguson. With Victor Robles batting, A’s catcher Shea Langeliers let a ball pass him, and Bliss attempted to score, only to be thrown out at home. Thankfully, Robles was able to get the run home with a sac fly, saving Logan the indignity of potentially taking a loss on a night when he was sterling.

The A’s took the lead again in the eighth. Logan Gilbert, at 83 pitches, exited the game, as Wilson said that they’d been targeting an 85-90 pitch count for him, and that plus the cold night and the developing bruise from the comebacker all made it an easy decision to lie him for Trent Thornton. Unfortunately, Soderstrom homered again, jumping on a cutter up in the zone and torching it into the right field seats to put the A’s ahead 2-1.

But then a little late-innings magic took hold, as the Mariners have done so many times before. Old frenemy José Leclerc is an Athletic now, and the Mariners continued their run of ruining his day. Cal Raleigh battled Leclerc, eventually striking out but making him throw 11 pitches. That brought up Arozarena. Leclerc got ahead 0-2, as Randy swung at a first-pitch slider and fouled it off, and then chased after a slider off the plate. Leclerc tried to put him away on a high fastball, but Arozarena fouled that one off, too, so Leclerc went back to the slider, but missed and left it on the plate for Randy to pummel into the next galaxy, while also spiking his bat into the Earth’s core:

After years of hitting the ball harder than almost anyone else in the league, Arozarena’s hard-hit rate took a bit of a tumble in 2024. The hardest ball he hit all season was 112.1 mph—a mark he bested the first time his bat made contact with the ball in the 2025 season, and followed up by this mammoth blast: 110.7 off the bat, and a whopping 424 feet.

“He’s seeing the ball. He’s hitting the ball well,” said Wilson. “And when he’s lining the ball, alining it to right center, he’s going to get out in front of the breaking ball like he did, and he’s going to be able to hit that a long way.”

But Leclerc’s long Northwest nightmare wasn’t over. Already with two singles under his belt, Polanco stepped to the plate with Luke Raley on with a walk, and announced to the 42,871 people in T-Mobile Park that the old Polo can’t come to the phone anymore, because he’s dead.

104.1 mph and 412 feet might seem petite next to Arozarena’s showtime blast, but it’s a great sign for Polanco, who continued to build off his solid spring and show what can be done with two functioning knees. Last season, it took until July 27 for Polanco to record a three-hit game; he then had one in August, and two in September. A visibly cheery Polanco spoke to the media postgame.

“I got the pressure out of my knee, and I just feel really good. I feel like I can do a lot more things,” Polanco said, adding that the more he plays third base, the more comfortable he feels there, as well.

“It’s a middle of the order bat, a guy that’s able to drive in runs,” said Wilson about Polanco’s night. “We talk about little things a lot with our club, and when you get guys on base, you have to get them in. And tonight he was the guy to get the two big ones in, and that meant the difference in the game. So having him healthy, having him swinging the bat, that really helps you drive in runs in the middle of that lineup.”

With the Mariners out to a 4-2 lead, Andrés Muñoz came on for the save, walking a hitter but getting a game-ending double play where J.P. Crawford was already hooting and hollering before the ball was even in Tellez’s glove.

Denying the starter a win for late-inning heroics (congratulations on your vultured win, Trent Thornton), and a cling-to-the-seats top of the ninth inning? We are so back.

Opening Night Highlights:

Worst: Aside from the Mariners squandering a chance for Logan Gilbert to get a much-deserved win, The Head and the Heart national anthem. I like their music usually, so I’m going to blame this on technical issues.

Best: Blair, the Make-a-Wish Kid, running the bases and hitting the celebration for each of the outfield trio at every base. I pledge allegiance to Blair.

Runner-up for best: The biggest ever Hotdogs from Heaven drop, with over 300 meaty treasures delivered to waiting arms of fans.

Weirdest/best/butweird: Louie Louie is back! But it’s a weird uptempo remix? Like techno-adjacent? I’m not sure how I feel about this but I don’t think I like it.

Most on-brand: Ichiro zipping in 84 mph on a ceremonial first pitch that metaphorically blew Dan Wilson’s wig off. “That was gasoline,” Wilson said postgame.

Second most on-brand: Cal avoiding the traditional photo op for his Rawlings Platinum Glove by hiding out in the bullpen. We know you have to warm up your pitcher, Cal, but it feels like he could have taken a moment out, especially since he received the largest rounds of applause of any Mariner pregame.