CINCINNATI – On another day here, or any other day anywhere else, it’s possible, and maybe even likely, that Mariners center fielder Julio Rodriguez would have tracked down the high fly ball that changed the course of Tuesday’s ballgame.
The ball, instead, changed course midair, tailing and sailing away from Rodriguez and just over the 404-foot sign in straightaway center field for a three-run home run off the bat of Cincinnati’s Austin Hays in the fifth inning at Great American Ball Park.
On a day of persistent gusts along the Ohio River, the wind-aided blast gave the Reds their first lead of the game, sending them to an 8-4 victory over the Mariners and spoiling Luis Castillo’s return to Cincinnati.
“I was talking to Julio at the end of the game, and if we were playing at our home that ball probably would have been an out,” Castillo said through interpreter Freddy Llanos. “But that’s the way the game goes here. This is their ballpark. And all merit to them – today, the ball went out.”
The Mariners (8-9) had their four-game winning streak snapped and dropped to 0-4 on the road this season.
After playing their first 16 games in extreme pitchers’ parks – 13 at home in Seattle, and three in San Francisco – the Mariners opened this nine-game road trip at one of MLB’s most extreme hitter-friendly parks.
Hays’ fifth-inning homer would not have been a home run in any other MLB park, according to Baseball Savant projections.
Castillo, though, did not make excuses. The Mariners’ 32-year-old right-hander wasn’t particularly sharp Tuesday, and the two walks he issued to lead off the fifth – to Matt McLain and Elly De La Cruz – were ultimately more damaging than the home run he allowed.
Castillo struggled to find the strike zone and wasn’t particularly effective when he did. He surrendered six runs on seven hits with four walks and three strikeouts in 4⅓ innings.
He got just eight swings-and-misses on his 95 pitches, and just 54 of those pitches were strikes. He threw first-pitch strikes to just 12 of the 24 batters he faced.
Mariners manager Dan Wilson had a right-handed reliever, Carlos Vargas, warming in the bullpen with Hays, a right-handed hitter, coming to the plate. But Wilson chose to stick with Castillo, one of his aces, with no outs in the fifth.
“It’s a tough one there,” Wilson said. ‘I think ‘The Rock’ comes through in a lot of those situations – we’ve seen it time and time again. And I think he was still at about 85 pitches, 87 pitches, something like that. So there was still some left in the tank … (but) they were able to convert there and take the lead.”
Playing in a small park, with a strong wind, Castillo said he didn’t approach this start any differently.
“No, I don’t change anything,” he said. “I mean, that’s nature, you know. You’ve just got to prepare to go out there and battle. … Sometimes it’s your night and sometimes it’s not.”
Castillo is one of the most significant trade acquisitions in recent Mariners history, coming over in July 2022 and helping the M’s end a 21-year playoff drought that year.
Coincidentally, the key prospect the Reds got back from the Mariners in that trade – third baseman Noelvi Marte – was demoted to Triple-A early in the day Tuesday.
Marte, still just 23, was suspended for the first 80 games of the 2024 season for testing positive for the banned substance, and he has yet to establish himself with the Reds.
Castillo broke in with the Reds in 2017 and became a two-time NL All-Star during his six seasons in Cincinnati.
“A lot of emotions,” Castillo said. “I spent a lot of years here and [had] a lot of good emotions coming back to my first home.”
Dylan Moore, making his first start in right field since September 2023, hit the first leadoff home run of his career – a 429-foot blast to center – and drove in all four Mariners runs. His two-run homer in the fifth inning to gave the Mariners a 4-2 lead.
It didn’t last long.
Hays, in his first game with the Reds after coming off the injured list earlier in the day, came through with the biggest swing of the game, and the Reds (9-8) tacked on two insurance runs in the eighth inning of Mariners reliever Gregory Santos.
After retiring the first batter he faced, Santos allowed a double, then walked the next three batters, a continuation of a troubling early-season trend for the mercurial right-hander.
Through his first eight appearances, Santos has issued eight walks with no strikeouts over seven innings, putting in jeopardy his place in the bullpen as the Mariners mull roster moves later this week.
“He just wasn’t able to get ahead and command the zone, command the count and take control the at bat,” Wilson said. “And that’s where he had a little bit of trouble tonight.”
One encouraging highlight for the Mariners (and their future): Ben Williamson made his debut for the Mariners, starting at third base and hitting a solid single to left field off Reds starter Nick Lodolo in his first at-bat.
“Really, really good for him to be able to get in here and get comfortable and find the barrel a couple times,” Wilson said. “That’ll certainly go a long way to make him feel more comfortable.”