Leo Rivas had seen enough.
Rivas laced a walkoff homer in the bottom of the 13th on Wednesday as the Mariners completed a sweep of the Cardinals. The 4-2 win was the Mariners’ fifth straight, and they held their ground just one game behind the Astros in the AL West.
Rivas, who returned to the Mariners when roster’s expanded on Sept. 1, started the game on the bench. He’d been in the cages working on his bunting in case he was called in late. That looked somewhat prescient when he stepped to the plate
for the first time in the 13th — even the Cardinals infield shaded him to bunt with the Manfred Man on second. But just before leaving the dugout, told Rivas to bunt, and if he could, pull the ball to the right side to move the runner up.
“He pulled it, all right,” Dan Wilson said postgame. “He pulled it right into the stands.”
The first pitch Rivas saw was a hanging slider right over the center of the plate. He didn’t need to see another and yanked it 361 feet to right field, just fair of the foul pole and eight rows deep. The 25,000 in attendance, who’d sat through several hours of a chaotic, tedious, low-scoring affair, erupted in disbelief as the Mariners dugout stormed onto the field. It was perhaps the most surprising event in a game that seemed capable of anything but ending.
Rivas didn’t get into the game until the 11th. Jorge Polanco laced a line drive into the right field corner to leadoff the inning, scoring the Manfred Man and tying the game at 2-2. Rivas took his place as a pinch runner and looked destined to score the winning run, especially after Eugenio Suárez walked and Luke Raley bunted his way on to load the bases with nobody out.
But J.P. Crawford nearly grounded into a 3-2-1 double play, then Cole Young grounded into a 1-2-3 double play, and the Mariners couldn’t finish the job. That was mostly the story of the game to that point. The lineup managed just one run in the second inning before Polanco added another in the 11th. They looked incapable of penetrating the Cardinals’ defense or laying off their breaking stuff. The Mariners left the bases loaded in the eighth, 10th and 11th innings.
The pitching that kept the Mariners in the game, though not in the conventional way. Logan Gilbert labored early and couldn’t make it out of the fifth, but a first-inning solo shot to Iván Herrera was all he allowed. In the second, he loaded the bases with nobody out before picking up three consecutive strikeouts to escape. In the fourth, he allowed a pair of leadoff singles before shimmying out of that as well. He was at 95 pitches when he hit a batter with two outs in the fifth. Dan Wilson turned to the bullpen.
The outlook wasn’t rosy. The elite portion of the Mariners’ bullpen was mostly unavailable, and it would be up to inconsistent and unknown relievers to eat several innings. In total, the back of the Mariners bullpen threw 8.1 innings. They allowed no earned runs, no walks and just three hits. Carlos Vargas, Gabe Speier, Caleb Ferguson, and Jose Castillo each worked scoreless innings to get the game to extra innings; Luke Jackson and Emerson Hancock each worked two innings to keep the game alive.
“It’s hard to describe how grateful you are for those kinds of efforts,” Wilson said of the bullpen. “Those guys, just, they gave it all, they left it all on the field tonight.”
Wilson noted the bullpen was energized by great defense behind them. The Mariners’ made several impressive plays throughout the game, but they really shined late. Crawford made a diving play to nab the leadoff batter in the top of the ninth. On the next play, Geno knocked down a sharp two-hopper before recovering and firing to first. He made another diving play towards the line in the 11th. Josh Naylor was involved in stretching for and scooping up countless throws following the acrobatics across the Mariners’ infield.
The defense caught a bit of a break in the top of the 10th. Alec Burleson leadoff with a sharp line out to deep right field that took a leap from Victor Robles ranging towards the corner to haul it in. Herrera, the Manfred Man on second, didn’t attempt to tag up, even though he clearly could have made it to third. The next batter then lobbed a weak fly out to Julio in center. But thinking the ball was going to drop, Herrera took off, and the Mariners doubled him up.
They weren’t as fortunate in the 11th. Thomas Saggese ripped a hanging slider from Jackson into left to make the game 2-1. It was the first run the Cardinals scored since the top of the first. They wouldn’t get another, and the game eventually got to Rivas in the bottom of the 13th.
The walkoff was Rivas’ second homer since returning to the Mariners when rosters expanded on Sept. 1 and the second homer of his career. He’s now 4-for-13 with three walks, two homers and a double since the recall. He was initially sent down at the end of May when the Mariners brought up Cole Young, but with solid a eye, strong base running and the ability to play multiple positions around the infield, Rivas has found himself back in a key role for the closing stretch of the season.
Rivas, who turns 28 next month, is something of a journeyman. He has just 175 plate appearance in MLB despite 11 years in professional baseball. He said after the game that he’s often struggled with being present, something his wife has helped him with over the last several years of uncertainty.
“Sometimes in the off-season I’m just lying in the bed with my wife, like, ‘do you see all that we’ve been through?’ he said postgame. “And now we’re here.”
