On Friday evening in Seattle, Logan Gilbert was on the mound and went two scoreless innings just two days after winning the third game of the American League Division Series. That performance was do or die; keep the Tigers winless or go home for the winter. The entire Mariners team contributed to that 15-inning win, let alone the knock-on effects for the pitching staff. A few days after that, on Monday in Toronto, Gilbert tried to reprise his heroic short-rest effort against a brutal Blue Jays offense in Game 2 of the American League Championship Series.
The Mariners couldn’t expect to get a top start from Gilbert, so their bats needed to put up enough runs to avoid the lingering effects of the enormous workload the pitching staff faced late last week. The attack produced enough goals and the throwers held their own despite the circumstances. When it was all settled in a 10-3 win in Seattle, the Mariners were just two wins away from their first World Series appearance in franchise history.
In an average playoff game, a three-run home run in the top of the first inning feels grueling, but this was no ordinary affair. Against Toronto rookie Trey Yesavagewho had silenced the Yankees in his postseason debut eight days earlier, Randy Arozarena hit by a pitch, Cal Raleigh walked, and then Julio Rodriguez beat up a splitter to advance the M’s.
But at the bottom of the first, the enormity of the hill Seattle had to climb quickly became apparent. Gilbert came out and immediately showed off his entire arsenal, throwing George Springer a sampler platter with sliders and splitters that simply couldn’t miss a bat. By the time Springer committed a 2-2 foul, the Seattle bench seemed concerned. When Springer blasted the next pitch off the left field wall, the consternation was already at a fever pitch.
Gilbert might have gotten away with a sloppy start, but Josh Naylor tried to make an almost impossible move on a Nathan Lucas grounder to first base and threw the ball away. Alejandro Kirk followed by a two-out single that made it 3-2. By the time Gilbert closed the door in the first inning, he had thrown 19 pitches and missed exactly one bat.
A cursory glance at Gilbert’s speed would tell you that he suffered no ill effects from his limited rest; he came out 95-96, just like he has all year. But a closer look reveals the modern data-driven equivalent of a house full of horrors. The speed on that heater may have been unchanged, but the rotation was down almost 200 rpm, which means about two inches less induced motion. In other words, it was flat and hitable, and the Blue Jays took advantage. They swung at 17 fastballs and missed only twice. Worse, it didn’t fool them; they swung at just 20% of fastballs outside the strike zone, but 88% of fastballs inside. In other words, they had no trouble figuring out where the ball was going or getting their bat to it.
Normally that would be a survivable problem for Gilbert. He has a spectacular splitter, an excellent slider and a big curveball that he breaks out for special occasions. But his fatigue affected more than just his heating. His slider and splitter both lost as much spin as the four-sieve, and that lost spin changed their movement profile from seductive to terrible. His slider lost a break in both directions, and opposing hitters had a 90% contact rate against it. His splitter was supposed to dive, but in his diminished form today he produced six inches of positive vertical break instead of an inch of negative break, meaning the pitch dropped much less than normal. He only threw one curveball, which should tell you how he felt about that; it fell nine inches less than his average curveball, and that was that.
All of this added up, and Gilbert threw with the equivalent of at least one hand tied behind his back. He returned for the second and worked again, throwing 27 pitches while doing his level best to navigate the dangerous top of the Toronto order, including an eight-pitch walk to Springer and a nine-pitch battle to retire. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. In between, Lukes belted a line drive single to tie the game, and it felt like only a matter of time before the Jays broke through for more. The third inning was Gilbert’s best yet, but even that was a struggle. He got only his second strikeout of the day when he hit a slider straight down the pipe and Daulton Varsho missed it. Gilbert had only thrown 58 pitches, but he looked completely cooked.
The reliever who followed him into the game wasn’t exactly fresh as a daisy. Eduard Bazardo got Sunday off, but he had pitched every ALDS game, including 2 2/3 innings and 39 pitches in the clincher. He also came with less material, but luckily his sinker/slider mix plays quite well even when the volume is turned down. He tried to get grounders, not whiffs, and that plan works a lot better with less stuff than “make ’em miss.” The Jays were all over Bazardo, fumbling just once in 15 turnovers, but they put the ball on the floor repeatedly. Between the fourth and fifth inning, Bazardo faced seven batters and grounded five. The other two at bats ended in a strikeout and a lazy catch. Did he need a little BABIP luck to make that two scoreless innings? Sure, but that plan seemed much better than getting more out of Gilbert.
The Seattle pitchers’ heroic effort would only matter if the bats could break through. Luckily, the Mariners offense has been one of the best in baseball all year. You might not realize it from the box scores, but it’s not their fault they play half their games in the offensively oppressive T-Mobile Park; their 113 wRC+, adjusted for the stadium, trailed only the Yankees this year. In the top of the fifth inning, Arozarena reached on a single plus an error, causing the Jays to intentionally walk Raleigh. The problem with that move is that most of Seattle’s lineup is a home run threat. The Jays came in Louis Varland to try to extinguish the rally, but after fooling Rodríguez with a sneaky fastball up the middle for strike three, he tried the same trick against Jorge Polancowho did what great hitters do with hittable fastballs. He took a huge pull, his heaviest swing of the match, and put the ball 400 feet away. Just like that it was 6-3 Mariners, even though they had seemingly been in trouble the entire game and were desperate to find a solution.
Suddenly the Blue Jays had a problem. They’d had two gift-wrapped opportunities to create offense against exhausted Mariners pitchers. They did well against Gilbert, scoring three runs in three innings, but I’m sure they were disappointed not to score more; the only extra-base hit they scored was Springer’s game-opening double, and despite Gilbert’s complete inability to throw the ball past them, they did not put enough runners on base to break the game open. Bazardo’s two innings of relief may not be noticeable on an average night, but when you’re facing Seattle’s elite run prevention unit and taking every opportunity to break through, three runs in five innings against two exhausted guys isn’t going to be enough.
I hope you’re not disappointed to see the recap almost over after just five innings of action, but this game was pretty much over as well. The Mariners stepped into the soft end of the Toronto bullpen and went to work. Mason Fluharty allowed a run with an unpredictable performance, which brought in Braydon Fisher against the top of the Seattle lineup in the sixth. After collecting a pair of outs to escape that inning, he surrendered a two-run homer to Naylor. Yariel Rodriguez came in to clean up Fisher’s mess and got into trouble himself by walking the first three batters he faced. After a pocket fly put the Mariners in double figures, mop up man Chris Bassitt was in to carry the last few innings of the offense.
The Jays couldn’t even claim a moral victory at the end of the game. Seattle sent Carlos Vargas And Emerson Hancock from the bulk innings section of the bullpen. Those guys combined for a negative WAR in the regular season, and Vargas got a goal in each of his first two appearances of the playoffs while Hancock had not appeared. The Jays had exactly zero hits in four innings against those guys; despite four walks and only two strikeouts between them, they finished the game without even a little bit of drama.
This series resumes Wednesday in Seattle. By then, the Mariners pitchers will be at least nearly rejuvenated. George Kirby will pitch on regular rest, and then Luis Castillo will take a regular rest during Game 4. Bryan Woo is lurking in the wings for a late series appearance. That should definitely terrify the Blue Jays, who just struggled to score four runs in 18 innings against the “easy” part of Seattle’s pitching staff. If this is what you can accomplish against a compromised Gilbert, Bryce Molenaar After a short break and the ‘B’ relievers, that’s a bad sign for the next few games.
On the other hand, what a brave effort by Gilbert. This is probably the worst thing he’s ever seen on a Major League mound. It was shocking to see. His splitter in particular seemed like a shadow of his normally devastating self. Every time he took the risk of throwing it into the strike zone, it was a breath-holding moment; the Blue Jays took big wins and almost never came up empty. But they ripped a bunch of secondary pitches wrong, well ahead of what would otherwise be crushable offerings, and seemed caught in the middle when he threw his bat-seeking fastball. It feels strange to call a three-run, three-innings performance a huge win, but that’s what happened here. Gilbert showed up and didn’t have it, but he still did enough to help his team.
The Mariners have played six games this postseason and this was the worst starting pitching performance of the group by a fair margin if you look only at the box score. However, if you take the difficulty into account, this might be the best of them all. The Mariners would have been happy to leave Toronto with even one win after their ALDS marathon victory. Instead, they’ll return home 2-0 in the ALCS because even if their pitchers don’t have their regular stuff, they’ve found a way to get the job done.
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