Mariners set for pre-fireworks piggyback with Gilbert, Hancock pairing up Saturday

SEATTLE -- After a one-week hiatus, the piggyback is returning to the Mariners’ rotation.

The club will re-deploy the tandem tactic for Saturday afternoon’s game vs. the Blue Jays, with Logan Gilbert starting and Emerson Hancock following in relief.

Additionally, the club will roll out Luis Castillo for Friday’s series opener and George Kirby for Sunday’s finale.

The Gilbert/Hancock alignment is the same that the club intended to go to last Saturday in Cleveland before a day-of adjustment that featured Gilbert making a standard start and Hancock starting the next day.

Doing so essentially gave everyone at least one additional day of rest -- some a few more -- which was the determining factor and not that Gilbert had been their hottest hand of late.

“The way we had it set up provided a little flexibility there, so we were able to do that,” Mariners manager Dan Wilson said before Thursday’s game vs. the Angels.

The expectation is that the Mariners will go to the piggyback once more before the All-Star break, during their upcoming road trip through Miami and St. Petersburg.

“Likely,” Wilson said. “Again, it's hard to know how it's all going to play out. But we'll likely have one more as we go forward.”

Presumably, the next piggyback after Saturday would feature Kirby and Bryan Woo, though Wilson stopped short of putting that in pen.

The Mariners have not announced their pitching probables beyond this weekend, though Woo has been directly behind Kirby in the rotation since Opening Day. And with Kirby going Sunday, and presumably Woo on Tuesday in Miami, the Mariners could conceivably line them up to piggyback in the final game of the first half, on July 12 at Tropicana Field.

“These guys all have wanted to shoulder the load,” Wilson said, “and we'll just, again, see how it plays out as we get there. But it's hard to say exactly at this point.”

When the Mariners unveiled plans to go to a rotation-wide piggyback on June 16, they intended to pair up each of their six starters to go on the front or back end of a paired-up start at least once before the break.

Bryce Miller and Castillo went through the first (in a June 19 loss to the Red Sox) and now Gilbert and Hancock will make their turn.

“It's the way we kind of planned it out,” Wilson said. “As we talked about, everyone is sharing the load a little bit. It was going to be those two before, and it will be those two again. So I think that's more of where it stands, rather than a strategic thing. It's just a matter of trying to keep everybody stretched out as best we can.”

So far, the Mariners have gone to a piggyback four times -- all featuring Miller and Castillo.

At first, it was explicitly just those two, to account for Miller being activated from the injured list and making his season debut and to keep Castillo stretched out, despite his early-season struggles.

Miller has since emerged as their most consistent starter over the past seven weeks, and Castillo, overall, has been far more effective.

And the piggyback has mostly been an effective strategy, as Miller and Castillo accounted for 36 of the 37 innings thrown in those four outings, over which the Mariners went 2-2. Part of the holistic strategy is also to give the bullpen -- which is already an arm short due to the club carrying six starters -- a full off-day.

Since the first piggyback game on May 19, Miller has a 1.79 ERA and Castillo has a 3.03 ERA, though that has included three standard starts apiece, too.

But in an equitable effort to keep everyone stretched out, they are spreading the piggyback out, with Gilbert/Hancock taking their turn next.