A comeback? In this economy?
In a game that was only actually watched by the roughly 3,000 people at American Family Fields of Phoenix, the Seattle Mariners secured their first away win of Spring Training by coming back from a 1-7 deficit and beating up on some minor league pitching. Spring Training often produces some silly final scores. 12-8 is extremely silly. Let’s see how we got there.
Photo by Chris Coduto/Getty Images
The Mariners started the game in 2024 fashion by going down 1-2-3 in the top of the first and sending Logan Gilbert to the mound without an ounce of support. Logan did something uncharacteristic by walking the leadoff batter Jackson Chourio. But he bounced back by striking out the side and leaving Chourio stranded. It took him a second to lock in, but LoGi is still LoGi.
In the second inning, the Mariners got on the board first when Mitch Haniger worked a full count before sending a mistake pitch on a good ride to left center. Very fun and cool, but lest we get too excited, he did the same thing last year. Besides a walk from Leo Rivas, that was all for the M’s in the top of the second.
In the bottom of the inning, Logan got himself into a bit of trouble when a pair of non-competitive at-bats led to a walk and a single. Logan was then lifted for 2024 draft pick Charlie Beilenson. Manager Dan Wilson had clearly decided that Beilenson would finish the inning in advance, and left the poor kid out there for dead. After issuing a walk to load the bases on a pitch timer violation, Beilenson gave up a double to Sal Frelick on a ground ball that steamed past Mastrobuoni at third.
That double scored two and put runners at second and third. Those runners scored on the very next pitch after Beilenson managed to scoop a ground ball, but failed to throw it to first, giving Milwaukee a 4-1 lead. Charlie’s nightmare afternoon in Arizona wasn’t over yet, as even inducing a double play from Brice Turang wasn’t enough to prevent a run. When William Contreras followed that up with a 7-pitch battle that ended with a single, Wilson finally pulled Beilenson from the game.
The score remained static for several innings, as both teams filtered out their major league hitters in exchange for their NRIs. Trent Thornton and Taylor Saucedo both had successful outings before Colin Snider entered the game in the bottom of the fifth. After getting Garrett Mitchell to strike out swinging, Snider gave up back to back home runs to Rhys Hoskins and Oliver Dunn to stretch the Milwaukee lead to 6.
But the game wasn’t over yet. In the top of the 6th, highly touted prospect Lazaro Montes work a 5 pitch walk off of AAA pitcher Evan McKendry and began a sort of rally. Hogan Windish and Nick Dunn hit back-to-back singles that loaded the bases, and former Angel Jack López hit a ground rule double to score 2. Harry Ford followed that up with a single of his own, scoring both Dunn and López and bringing the M’s within 2. That deficit was erased completely when Bill Knight singled himself on base, and Michael Arroyo brought him and Harry home with a double to left field.
The Brewers took the lead back in the next inning after working a man to third and scoring him off of Gabe Speier. But that lead didn’t last long after Lazaro led off the 7th by walking to bring up Hogan Windish, who followed up his earlier single with a two run moonshot over the batter’s eye to straightaway center. The Mariners padded that lead in the 8th when a double and a walk brought up Lazaro Montes for the third time of the night. After proving that he knows when to lay off a bad pitch, he decided to prove he knows how to swing at a good one, and sent a middle-middle pitch bouncing off the batter’s eye for a three run blast. Welcome to camp, Laz.
Lazaro Montes’ debut can’t come soon enough
From there it was an easy job for Sauryn Lao and Christian Little to close things out for Seattle, and secure the Mariners first road win of Spring Training.
So what did we learn, Palmer? As it is Spring Training, almost less than nothing, especially as the ballpark lacked any kind of statcast information. The standout of today’s win was Lazaro Montes, who showed mature patience and pitch selection, not to mention his oft-touted power. Patience is perhaps and pitch selection are the two things I want to see most from Laz while he’s in the big league camp and he gets to see pitching above the level he’s used to.
Beyond that and things like that no pitcher seems to be particularly low on velocity at this point in the pre-season, there are basically no conclusions — for good or ill — that we can draw from these first 4 games of spring training. Instead, we can just enjoy that the M’s have scored 33 runs in 3 games, a feat we aren’t likely to see repeated anytime soon. Tomorrow the M’s stay on the road to take on the LA Dodgers at 12:05pm PT.