Gilbert's Game 3 team-up with alter ego 'Walter' has Mariners on cusp of ALCS
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DETROIT -- Slowly but surely on Tuesday night, Logan Gilbert summoned the alter ego that’s been attached to the Mariners’ towering right-hander when pitching as a madman.
They call him “Walter” -- the persona of a pitcher who is gentle off the mound but slays with strikeouts while on it.
“Walter” hadn’t yet come out of his shell early in Game 3 of the American League Division Series on Tuesday night, but as tension built, so did Gilbert's confidence. And with it, Gilbert’s second self enveloped him as the Mariners ran away to a dominant 8-4 win over the Tigers.
“Usually when I'm at my best out there,” Gilbert said, “it's almost like a different person.”
Against a team that’s been branded as “gritty,” Gilbert flipped the script in Detroit’s home environment. He dominated from the get-go, slicing his splitter past the Tigers, including one silly swing after another, en route to seven total strikeouts and just one run surrendered over his six innings.
Coupled with plenty of run support from an offense that broke out in a big way, the Mariners are now one win away from just their fourth AL Championship Series in franchise history and first since 2001. And as has been well chronicled, they are MLB’s only team that has never played in the World Series.
"It’s awesome to hear that and be in this position,” Gilbert said in a postgame chat with Tom Verducci. “At the same time, we’re a long way away. Nine innings is a long time. I love the momentum we have. Hopefully, we can win it in four. We’d love to win it in Seattle, but I don’t want to take any chances.”
Beyond Gilbert, the Mariners benefited from the long ball, with homers from Eugenio Suárez, J.P. Crawford and Cal Raleigh. They played some small ball, headlined by Victor Robles’ heads-up play to score from third after a throwing error got past catcher Dillon Dingler. Really, they had everything working at the plate, enough to grind out Tigers starter Jack Flaherty before the end of the fourth inning.
And the Mariners will need to keep that momentum rolling as they look to close out this series in Game 4 on Wednesday afternoon. They will do so behind right-hander Bryce Miller -- an assignment that became clear once Bryan Woo was left off the ALDS roster while recovering from right pectoral inflammation.
“It was tentatively the plan from the beginning,” said Miller, who was not on the Mariners’ 2022 team that reached the postseason.
In all best-of-five postseason series that have been tied 1-1, the Game 3 winner has gone on to take the series 47 of 66 times (71.2%). In Division Series with the current 2-2-1 format, teams playing Game 4 on the road with a 2-1 edge have advanced 23 of 34 times (67.7%), closing out the series in Game 4 in 19 of those instances.
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“I think that the Seattle Mariners deserve where we are right now, and the fans as well,” said Suárez, who snapped an 0-for-8 stretch to start this ALDS with a 422-foot solo shot in the fourth.
His was the first of those three homers, and none of them were cheapies in cavernous Comerica Park.
Crawford demolished his 397 feet to the pull side in the sixth that was among his most majestic, but Raleigh had the night’s highlight with a 391-foot blast the opposite way in the ninth, punctuating his raw power as well as any over his 60-homer regular season.
Making the moment sweeter was that the ball one-hopped the Mariners’ bullpen and reached the bleachers to a fan wearing a T-shirt that read “DUMP HERE,” with a massive No. 61 in the middle. The fan -- Jameson Turner, originally from Longview, Wash., but who now lives in Las Vegas -- then took off the shirt and unveiled a replacement that read: “DUMP HERE -- No. 62.”
“I went to the final regular-season game in Seattle -- this is just overwhelming -- so I decided to fly out here and see if I give it one more shot,” said Turner, who made the shirts himself on a machine that he learned how to use on YouTube.
Raleigh’s homer was the finishing touch on a night where the Mariners flexed the offensive force they built their roster around. But the blueprint for the organization’s success has always been rooted in starting pitching -- and in many ways, anchored by Gilbert.
And his 2025 season has been emblematic of the rotation as a whole.
Gilbert was among their four starters who dealt with a fairly significant injury (a right elbow flexor strain that sidelined him nearly two months) as well as the challenges of finding a groove upon returning. Gilbert had a 3.44 ERA in the regular season and the second-highest strikeout rate (32.3%) of 95 pitchers with at least 130 innings, behind only the Phillies' Zack Wheeler.
Tuesday was just the ninth time in 26 starts in 2025 in which Gilbert pitched at least six innings, after leading MLB with 208 2/3 frames in ‘24. And it all appears to be coming together at the opportune time, as Gilbert had a 2.30 ERA in five September starts before Tuesday’s gem.
"He's a cold-blooded killer when he steps out on the mound,” Crawford said. “And that's why his name is ‘Walter’ -- it's just a scary name. No offenses to the Walters out there.”
As for the nickname’s origin story, it stemmed from Gilbert’s days at Stetson University, when his teammates joked that he should come up with a moniker for his pitching personality.
Because, as Gilbert says, “We were just joking around with names and somehow I said, ‘Walter.’ But for me, it's more about the difference between what it takes to get me at my best, being ultra-competitive and having some attitude.”
The Tigers had a rude meeting with “Walter” on Tuesday, as well as an ignited Mariners offense. And because of it, Seattle is on the cusp of the ALCS.