On his last start on the Fourth of July, against the Giants in 2023, Logan Gilbert pitched a complete-game shutout, holding the Giants to just five hits with seven strikeouts and no walks. Gilbert wouldn’t quite match that mark today – he couldn’t quite go the distance, but still collected seven strikeouts while not issuing a walk over 7.1 innings of work, and held the Blue Jays to just one (fake) hit – but it was nonetheless another star performance from Gilbert, who seems to have fully turned the corner
from his early-season struggles.
Logan Gilbert came into today’s game needing nine strikeouts to reach a career mark of 1,000, and fell just two short of doing it in front of the home crowd. Strikeout Number 992 came in the first inning, on a three-pitch dismantling of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. with a fastball-fastball-slider sequence. Classic. Elegant. Number 993 came right on its heels, again on the slider, with Gilbert staying stubborn to the pitch despite missing on it the pitch before and getting Kazuma Okamoto to eventually swing over it.
994 was his lone strikeout in the second inning, freezing Yohendrick Piñango with a perfectly-spotted 97.1 mph four-seamer after Piñango had declined to swing at the splitter and slider the pitch before. Similarly, 995 was his only strikeout in the third, again after going splitter-slider to Blue Jays catcher Brandon Valenzuela; once again, Gilbert froze him on 97, this time right in the middle of the plate. 996 came in the fourth and was Guerrero again, a near carbon-copy of the first at-bat except this time ending on a strikeout on the curveball.
The strikeouts dried up some after that, with the Blue Jays making some quick weak-contact outs in the fifth, and annoyingly one hit from Piñango that fell, breaking up Gilbert’s perfect game. Logan looked pretty annoyed about this little 70something bloop hit finding grass:
997 came in the sixth inning, this time victimizing Andrés Giménez, the contact-forward infielder. Gilbert put him away with a changeup, a wrinkle he introduced in the back half of his outing. But while the strikeout pace slowed, Gilbert continued to get outs: he was at 71 pitches at the end of the sixth, and although the seventh inning cost him another 17 pitches, he did collect strikeout 998, getting former Mariner Jonatan Clase swinging after a four-seamer at 97.
“The velo on the fastball – it didn’t seem like he lost it at all,” said manager Dan Wilson postgame. “He just kept locating it and commanding it where he wanted.”
Gilbert wasn’t the only one chasing a personal milestone today. In the second, the Mariners got their first run scored on a hit in 22 innings when Victor Robles collected his 500th career hit, a sharp single into left field that scored Cole Young, who had hit a line-drive double to the gap in a full count – a lovely little piece of hitting from the youngster. Speaking of nice hits from youngsters, Colt Emerson broke a rough stretch with a line drive single up the middle to keep the inning going with two outs. J.P. Crawford walked to load the bases, taking advantage of some shaky command from Blue Jays starter Shane Bieber, making just his third start after missing the first part of the season with elbow inflammation. That brought up Randy Arozarena – the Mariners’ lone All-Star in 2026, at least for now – who already had a double on the day on a four-seamer that was a foot off the plate. This time, Bieber tried to sneak a slider past Randy, who emphatically Did Not Miss It:
Despite an inflated pitch count, Bieber hung in until the fifth, when he issued a leadoff walk to Randy – at that point, understandable – but then left a cutter dead read for Dominic Canzone, who absolutely obliterated it to right-center for a no-doubt home run that Canzone knew was gone the instant it came off the bat.
The Mariners continued to add on even after Bieber departed the game, touching up former Mariner farmhand Adam Macko for a run: Colt Emerson reached on a bunt base hit, and Randy pushed him to third on the rare infield single/throwing error combo. Canzone then picked up his third RBI of the day on a tidy ground ball single to make it 8-0 Mariners. That was enough for Jays manager and current holder of the Mike Scioscia Memorial Trophy for Reddest Man in Baseball, John Schneider, who lifted Macko for Tommy Nance, and the Mariners quickly made Nancemeat out of him: Cal Raleigh joined the hit parade with a deep blast to right to push this game squarely into “laugher” territory.
“That’s what our offense does. We can wear you down, and then we get a big hit and things go our way,” said Wilson postgame. They certainly went the Mariners’ way today.
After that the only question was whether Gilbert could reach the 1000 K mark here at home. Wilson gave Gilbert the start of the eighth, when he retired Ernie Clement on a lineout on a curveball, but lifted him after that so he could enjoy an ovation at home.
“Every pitch he threw today had serious conviction behind it. He just made good pitches all day long, and never really gave them a chance to settle in…I think he deserved quite an ovation today, and he got a chance to go out there and face the crowd and let them show their appreciation. A great moment for him,” said Wilson.
Cole Wilcox took over for Gilbert to close the eighth and got the next two outs; after the Jays sent out a sacrificial Myles Straw as the position player to pitch the bottom of the eighth (scoreless!), he had a soft landing in the ninth with the 11-run cushion, but was still able to spin a 1-2-3 inning to keep the shutout intact and close out the Mariners’ biggest win by margin of victory – their previous high was eight runs, a number they’ve matched four times – this season. It also felt like the Mariners’ largest margin of victory spiritually, spurred by a Logan Gilbert who seems to have finally found his groove, a redemptive homer from a struggling Cal Raleigh, and contributions from up and down the lineup – every starter but Luke Raley had a hit or at least a walk (J.P.) – even while Julio Rodríguez misses time with a concussion. Lucy has pulled the football away far too many times this season for Mariners fans to feel like this team has turned a corner, but on today of all days, we can enjoy the offensive fireworks no matter how long they burn.
