WEST SACRAMENTO -- First place suddenly came within the Mariners’ grasp on Tuesday night in a divisional showdown against the very team they’re chasing.
And within a 4-1 win over the Athletics came a promising development that’s eluded them for most of this season: They hit a left-handed starting pitcher -- early, often and hard.
Seattle ambushed southpaw Gage Jump -- who was making his Major League debut -- for each of their four runs and nine hits while chasing him after five innings. On the other side, the Mariners ended A’s slugger Nick Kurtz’s on-base streak at 48 games, which is tied with Mark McGwire for the franchise record.
Basically, they exercised a little spoiler mojo on the team that’s emerged as their truest threat -- at least so far -- in defending their American League West title.
“As far as the players go, there hasn't been any panic all year,” said Mitch Garver, who went 2-for-4 and put the Mariners on the board with an RBI ground-rule double off Jump in the second inning.
“Like, we know we're good. It's a matter of time. Things just have to click together. Sometimes, the pitching is good, sometimes the offense is poor -- vice versa. So we just need to make sure that we do that as good as we can every game. And I think we're showing that right now.”
The Mariners (27-29) are still trying to get back above .500 for the first time since March 30. But with a sweep in Wednesday’s finale, they’d have sole possession of first place for the first time all season.
That they’re this close to the top speaks to how hamstrung most of the division has looked. And no team has embodied this more than Seattle, which entered the season as the heavy favorites but has labored through inconsistencies and key injuries through the one-third mark of the season.
Yet they can end this series on an even higher note beyond a sweep.
“You start to feel like maybe you get to a groove and start to feel a little bit more consistent,” Mariners manager Dan Wilson said. “And I think that's what we're looking for.”
The offensive highlights were promising, but the night’s MVP was easily Emerson Hancock, who began the night 12 up and 12 down and finished the night with six shutout innings, allowing just one hit and surrendering two walks. In the process, he lowered his team-best ERA to 2.78 through 11 starts.
Hancock has arguably been the roster’s best development, and beyond the raw numbers, he showed why on Tuesday.
Hancock threw first-pitch strikes to just 13 of his 22 batters, yet didn’t issue a walk until Brent Rooker led off the fifth, then another to Carlos Cortes with one out in the sixth. That came despite falling into a three-ball count to 11 of the 22 batters he faced. Hancock’s 5.7% walk rate represents a dip from 8.1% last year.
“It's something that I want to continue to work on,” Hancock said, “because I do think I can be a lot better at that. But at the same time, you're not out of it. Like, you've got to keep fighting. You've got to keep making pitches and find new ways to kind of mix and match your pitches.”
He’s seen an even bigger uptick in whiffs, as his strikeout rate has climbed from 16.6% to 26.2%, which is a team best. That’s correlated to a 1.01 WHIP, which is tied for 10th-best among 76 qualified pitchers and best on the team.
“His mindset is to attack,” Wilson said. “But sometimes when he gets behind, he is able to jump back in, and I think it's [about] trusting his stuff. And trusting the fact that he can still go in the zone and get swing and miss.”
Both walks from Hancock were followed by more traffic that pushed him into legitimate jams, yet he escaped by inducing groundouts. They were the types of moments where, in years past, things might spiral.
“He's a stud, man,” Garver said. “He has a really good idea of what he wants to do each night when he steps on the mound. And tonight, we had to pivot a little bit and go to a different game plan because of how aggressive they were. So we'd start throwing the sinker more, which was really effective. We had a ton of weak contact.”
For all the other developments coming within their rotation -- chiefly among them being the piggyback situation -- Hancock continues to be a beacon of consistency.