A day after being left behind by some more lefty pitching from the Red Sox, the Mariners righted the ship and escaped being swept by Boston thanks to the righteous contributions of three of their lefties: Dominic Canzone (actual lefty), Cole Young (actual lefty), and Logan Gilbert (spiritual lefty).
Gilbert – who does everything except throw a baseball with his left hand – was masterful today over six innings and change, holding down the Red Sox. He struck out eight, and lit up the radar gun with some
extra zip on his four-seamer, averaging 96.8 mph on the pitch today. Gilbert leaned heavily on his heater, throwing it almost 70% of the time, using it to get ahead in counts and then putting the Red Sox hitters away with a combination of his curveball and later, splitter. Gilbert praised his catcher (who gets half-credit as a lefty as a switch hitter) Cal Raleigh for calling that particular combination of pitches.
“Cal did a good job – like, [with two strikes] I think slider right away, probably. And he went to curveball a few times with two strikes. I think that was smart, looking back afterwards. If guys are kind of in-between bat speed you don’t really want to give them a gift, something at 90 or whatever. So the curveball at 81, if you’re keeping the same hand speed and everything. I think it does a good job fooling them.”
The Mariners made some loud contact early against Red Sox starter Payton Tolle, but didn’t get anything for it until Dominic Canzone laced an opposite-field home run to put the Mariners up 1-0. It was a nice at-bat by Canzone overall against the lefty, fouling off a couple pitches, refusing to chase a cutter outside, and then putting a good swing on a 98.4 mph fastball on the plate to push it right over the left-field wall, territory usually reserved for the Mariners’ right-handed hitters.
“That was a wall scraper,” said Canzone, who usually doesn’t hit those, as he is enemy number one of the glass panes at the Hit it Here Café in right field.
Unfortunately, the Red Sox got that run right back in the top of the third. Nine-hole hitter Nate Eaton jumped on a fastball up and crushed it well into Edgar’s for his first home run of the season (and second-ever career home run). While that outcome falls squarely in the “sometimes they’ll get their hits too” bucket, it was nonetheless disheartening given the Mariners’ recent dearth of offense, especially when facing lefty starters.
The Mariners actually had a chance in the bottom of the fourth, as Tolle lost the handle on his command and issued back-to-back walks, but Rob Refsnyder, right on cue, went after the first pitch he saw and grounded into a double play. But they were able to make a little two-out noise in the fifth inning, when Weston Wilson jumped on a first-pitch cutter in the middle of the plate for a single; the certified large lad Weston (6’3”, below 50th percentile sprint speed) then surprised the Red Sox by stealing second base, bringing up the lefty Cole Young.
Young has quietly had a very grueling 2026: he’s the only Mariner who’s played every day, and because of the Mariners’ struggles to hit left-handed pitching, he’s also had about a third more at-bats facing lefties already than he had all of last season (67 in 2025; he would come in just under the century mark today). So as impressive as Canzone’s at-bat was earlier, this at-bat from Young is my Play of the Day. Tolle threw him the same pitch twice, the four-seamer on the plate, and Young took the first one for a strike, but was ready for it the second time he saw it, while working the count at-bat in between those two pitches; on pitch eight, he scalded an opposite field single right past a diving Marcelo Mayer.
The Mariners were able to scrape another run off Tolle in the sixth, when Julio Rodríguez led off with a single and was able to move to third on a mistake play where Mayer mishandled a routine-looking grounder from Refsnyder. Dominic Canzone brought Julio home on an RBI groundout, but at a cost, as he came up pulling at his hamstring after running to first and had to leave the game.
But three runs looked very robust next to Logan Gilbert’s outing. Aside from the fluky solo homer, Gilbert was never really in trouble on the mound today, and his few mistakes were quickly rectified: when he did give up a bad-luck base hit in the fourth, it was erased with a double play; a leadoff single in the fifth was erased thanks to a rare pickoff from Gilbert; and a leadoff walk in the sixth was again erased with a double play, this one courtesy of some strong defense from Canzone, who dove for a flyball and then doubled off Eaton, who erroneously ran too far off second.
“I feel very comfortable coming in and diving,” said Canzone, aiming to prove he’s the right man for the everyday right fielder job. “Going back is a little bit of a different story, but it felt pretty good today.”
Gilbert made it into the seventh, and he should have had two outs but Josh Naylor mishandled the throw on a routine groundout, causing poor Logan to take a tumble past first base (because Josh Naylor likes to be oppositionally defiant and refused to join the parade of Lefties Doing Good Things). With one on and one out, Gabe Speier came in to face the lefty Jarren Duran and struck him out on some high and inside heat, but righty Caleb Durbin was able to get to a 97 mph sinker on the bottom right corner and laced it into left for a double. The Red Sox pinch hit righty Andruw Monasterio for the lefty Mayer and Speier excommunicated Monasterio on three straight pitches – 98.1, 97.8., and 97.1 mph respectively, with two of those setting new season highs in velocity for Speier. Eduard Bazardo pitched a clean 1-2-3 inning in the eighth to move the game right along to the ninth.
It’s been a while since Andrés Muñoz has looked right, and he wasn’t perfect today, allowing a single to the second hitter he faced, but he was able to quell any Red Sox threat in the ninth and deliver his 13th save of the season. Encouragingly, Muñoz’s stuff was up a tick: he averaged 99.9 mph on his heater, touching as high as 101.1, and 88.3 on the slider, which tempted swings on back-to-back strikeouts from Contreras and Duran to end the game and seal the victory.
Happy Andrés, happy Cal, happy Logan, happy dance, happy fans in a sellout crowd, the third straight sellout of the weekend. This team still faces injury issues and roster construction questions, but for today, at least, all is right in Mariners-land.
