HOUSTON -- Given the stakes of where they sit in both the standings and calendar, as well as the opponent and venue, it wouldn’t be a stretch to call this the Mariners’ most monumental game of the season.
And the tense atmosphere within this Sunday Night Baseball environment certainly lived up to it.
With everyone at Daikin Park on the edge of their seats, the Mariners held on to a 3-2 win over the Astros to take this three-game series, one that would’ve been a sweep had they escaped the ninth inning on Friday.
And it nearly came completely undone in a bases-loaded jam in the eighth inning that had House of Horrors written all over it.
Seranthony Domínguez struck out Daulton Varsho to silence a hostile crowd, just after Varsho hooked one narrowly foul that could’ve been a dagger. But the real hiccup came the at-bat prior, when Domínguez was summoned to face Jose Altuve but tripped going back on what would’ve been a routine popup to Cole Young.
That’s when things got extremely dicey, in a venue where the Mariners have suffered some of their most stinging losses of this era -- and as recently as Friday.
To load the bases, Houston generated a pair of consecutive, two-out singles vs. Gabe Speier -- from Yordan Alvarez and Isaac Paredes -- before manager Dan Wilson went to Domínguez, who was Seattle’s only reliever warming.
Andrés Muñoz wound up closing things out in the ninth, two days removed from surrendering five earned runs in a walk-off loss that was shaping up to be a gut-check win. Munoz has only once this season pitched more than one inning, in an Aug. 1 win over Minnesota, which Wilson suggested at the time was due to higher urgency at this season’s stage.
Not going to Munoz for a four-out save on Sunday was of intrigue, but it wound up working out anyway -- albeit with a crisis brewing.