MILWAUKEE -- Julio Rodríguez has made that play thousands of times.
This one, though, came with a mistake that perfectly encapsulated a night the Mariners would rather forget.
With Seattle already trailing by 19 runs in the eighth inning Tuesday night at American Family Field, Christian Yelich lifted a routine fly ball to Rodríguez in deep center field with the bases loaded and one out. Rodríguez settled underneath it, made the catch and casually chucked the ball into the stands.
There was just one problem: It was only the second out.
One runner had already tagged from third, but the mistake allowed another to come all the way around from second, pushing Milwaukee’s lead to 21-0. On a night when seemingly everything that could go wrong for the Mariners did, the sight of Rodríguez realizing his mistake served as a fitting snapshot.
"You obviously never want to be the guy that does that,” Yelich said. “But it's a long game, you're on defense for a while, and it was kind of chaos there in the last inning with the lineup turning over and all the action going. It just happens sometimes. You lose track of the outs."
By the time it finally ended, Seattle had suffered its worst loss in franchise history, falling, 22-0, to the Brewers.
“Obviously, not how we wanted to start this game,” manager Dan Wilson said. “It just got out of hand. They put up a lot of runs tonight, and we were quiet offensively. It’s a tough one to even think about.”
The 22-run margin surpassed Seattle’s previous worst defeat, a 21-1 loss to Houston on Sept. 8, 2019. It also tied the largest shutout victory in MLB’s Modern Era (since 1900), matching Pittsburgh’s 22-0 win over the Cubs in 1975 and Cleveland’s 22-0 victory over the Yankees in 2004.
And somehow, the night didn’t even begin like a historic blowout.
The Mariners trailed only 1-0 entering the fifth inning, with Bryce Miller keeping them within striking distance despite Milwaukee creating traffic early. Miller retired nine straight at one point and entered the fifth having limited the damage.
Then everything unraveled.
Milwaukee scored five times in the inning, capped by Yelich’s three-run homer with two outs that turned a manageable deficit into a 6-0 hole. Yelich was Miller’s final batter.
“If I make a pitch there, get out of it, we’re still in the game,” Miller said. “Left the splitter up a little bit, and he got to it. … We get out of that inning and it’s 3-0 instead of 6-0. It’s a big difference.”
Wilson took responsibility afterward for leaving Miller in to face Yelich.
“That decision’s on me,” Wilson said. “Accountability’s there. It’s on me. It starts and stops there. … Wanted to get Bryce through there, but just didn’t make the right choice, and it cost us.”
What followed made the fifth inning look tame.
David Hamilton hit a three-run homer in the sixth, and Jake Bauers added a two-run shot later in the inning. Milwaukee piled on nine more runs in the eighth against infielder Leo Rivas, including Luis Lara’s first career homer.
By then, the Brewers had transformed a one-run game into something almost unrecognizable.
“This was an embarrassing loss,” Miller said. “We got our [butts] kicked. At the end of the day. We’ve got to go to the hotel, sleep, wake up, and we’ve got another game tomorrow.”
The Mariners’ offense offered no resistance, either. Seattle managed five hits and was shut out for the 12th time this season, even after Milwaukee turned to catcher Gary Sánchez to pitch the ninth inning.
For a Mariners team that entered Milwaukee hoping to build off one of its most encouraging weekends of the season, the timing made the result sting even more.
Seattle had just taken two of three from Houston, pulling within four games of the Astros in the American League West and showing signs that an offense that had struggled for much of the year might finally be awakening.
Twenty-four hours later, the Mariners were trying to process the most lopsided defeat in franchise history.
“We’ve played a lot of good baseball the last several games,” Wilson said. “We need to get back to that. This one, sometimes it goes this way. … We’ve got to come back tomorrow and be ready to find a way.”
Cal Raleigh put it even more simply.
“Just flush it,” Raleigh said. “Obviously, you don’t ever want to get beaten like that. But at the same time, move on, flush it, go to the next one.”
After a night like this, there isn’t much other choice.