BALTIMORE -- The Mariners took two Orioles runs off the board on Monday night in a game that proved to be more decided by inches than the final score would suggest.
And both runs they yanked back in a 6-3 win came via challenges that overturned their initial calls.
“That was sick,” said Josh Naylor, who ensured that Seattle had the wiggle room to work around the close calls with a decisive grand slam during the fifth inning.
It wasn’t just that the Mariners were successful with both challenges in question -- rather, that they were each extremely borderline calls, in high-leverage spots and necessitated a quick trigger.
Backup catcher Jhonny Pereda executed maybe the most monumental ABS challenge of Seattle’s season when overturning a full-count, bases-loaded walk to Pete Alonso that instead yielded a called strikeout for the second out in a dicey seventh inning. Matt Brash, who was on the mound with his shakiest command of the season, then settled back in and generated a groundout to Colton Cowser to get out of the crisis-brewing jam altogether.
Then in the eighth and with another threat looming, Mariners manager Dan Wilson and video and replay operations coordinator Jake Kuruc initiated a traditional challenge that eliminated a scoring tag up from Jackson Holliday to the plate. On that one, Julio Rodríguez ignited an 8-4 double play with Ryan Bliss with a 96.2 mph heave to the second baseman that nabbed speedster Blaze Alexander, who was also attempting to tag up.
Home-plate umpire Gabe Morales initially ruled that Holliday had crossed the plate just before the out at second, but a lengthy review from MLB’s headquarters in New York overturned the call.
“It's one of those things -- the umpire makes the call, and it's worth checking,” Wilson said. “You've got to try to check it. He's seeing it live, and it was pretty bang-bang. But Jake was all over it. And that's a huge turnaround right there. It's a huge lift.”
Rodríguez has always had the big arm, but Monday’s throw had even more mustard on it. It was tied for the Mariners’ fifth-hardest outfield assist since Statcast began tracking the metric in 2015.
He corralled the liner 381 feet from home plate, just in front of the warning track and delivered a no-hop dime to Bliss, who made more of a blind tag than it appeared.
“I knew I was in the vicinity of the bag, and I knew [Alexander] was tagging,” said Bliss, who was recalled from Triple-A Tacoma earlier Monday when J.P. Crawford was placed on the IL. “So I just was like, 'Even if he's not there, at least I have it in front of the bag. If he tries to swim, I'll just go get him.' But he was there, so that was mostly just very instinctual.”
Moreover, because Bliss’ back was to the plate, he had no idea how close the play was involving Holliday and assumed he’d scored in plenty of time. He actually thought the Orioles were challenging that Alexander was safe on the play directly in front of him.
Had both Holliday and Alexander reached, there would’ve been two outs with the tying run at the plate.
“I was like, 'Oh no, I hope he didn't get in there,'” Bliss said. “But then I found out that they were doing that. So yeah, that's huge. A really good throw by Julio around the bag. I mean, they tried it. They tested him again. It was fun.”
The Mariners wound up winning by three runs, so it might seem that the successful challenges were mostly moot -- or would’ve instead led to a much closer game. But the one from Pereda, in particular, would suggest otherwise, especially considering that Seattle’s bullpen was on the cusp of a meltdown for the second straight day.
Baltimore still would’ve needed a lot to go right to rally back in this one, but with the cleanup man Cowser as the tying run and Brash struggling so mightily to find the strike zone, one big swing could’ve done it.
“It was kind of the turning point in the game there,” said Brash, who sailed a run-scoring wild pitch to the backstop then hit Taylor Ward on consecutive pitches almost immediately upon entering. “I'm happy [Pereda] had the stones to do it. It's a big spot, and it's our last [challenge], and yeah, I'm just happy he pulled the trigger on it.”
Despite all the drama leading up to the ninth inning, even more manifested for the final three outs -- as Andrés Muñoz was summoned one day after his fifth blown save. The two-time All-Star fell into a 2-0 count to his first batter and walked his second but ultimately locked down his 10th save with consecutive strikeouts to Alonso and Cowser.