In the preview, I noted that Kade Anderson would face a real test with the top third of the Dodgers lineup tonight, and his results were like my typical attempts to pick up women: 0 for 3. Miguel Rojas led off with a double off the 410 marker on the centerfield wall. Anderson then tried to avoid the middle of the zone against Kyle Tucker, but ended up avoiding the zone entirely, with a five-pitch walk. Teoscar Hernandez put the cap on it by going yard to right field. Anderson picked up the next three outs, but, even then, he was consistently missing arm-side. His velo’s up a bit from his first outing, but this was the first time he looked simply overmatched.
He settled down a bit in the second, punching out Nick Senzel on a Bugs Bunny changeup and Eliezer Alfonso on a fastball. Anderson’s third inning was shaping up to be another rough one when he walked Tucker again, but Brandon Donovan cleaned it up with a very quick-handed double play, and Anderson completed his day with his third strikeout, this time on a 94-mph fastball. While he looked less impressive than his first couple outings, I still came away pleased, as he never seemed to lose his composure even as things were going off the rails in the first. A guy in his third pro game got beat by some of the Dodgers’ everyday players; that’s hardly cause for concern.
The bottom of the Mariners’ lineup tried to back him up a bit with a rally in the second where back-to-back doubles from Rhylan Thomas and my boy Brock Rodden tied the game up at three. But that was just about all the bats did all night other than when they drew three free passes off Blake Treinen in the fifth, but they couldn’t cash any of those runs in.
The middle of the Mariners bullpen was the most impressive contingent tonight, with Carlos Vargas and Jose Ferrer recording six outs on 33 pitches with five pieces of weak contact and a strikeout. The strikeout was the separator between them that secures Ferrer tonight’s Sun Hat Award for making a notable individual contribution to the game. The pair’s competence was a welcome reprieve from Gabe Speier surrendering a home run to Bo Naylor in the WBC. You’ll forgive me for being too distraught to follow the rest of the Mariners game closely.
It wasn’t as if I was missing much. The sixth inning saw a bizarre face-off between Kyle Tucker and Robinson Ortiz (who I always think of as “Robinson Ortiz, Caribbean fusion,” a phrase that lives in my head rent-free). We got an ABS challenge that overturned a call, followed by a pitch-clock violation, followed by a monster home run. Our beautiful game.
Robinson Ortiz, Caribbean fusion couldn’t find the zone after that and got pulled before recording an out. Tyler Cleveland came in to relieve him, so we got to hear another team’s broadcast booth marvel at his funky delivery. Despite walking his first batter, Cleveland looked pretty good, right up to the point that he gave up a three-run home run. Although that ball was barely fair and barely over the wall, it brought the score to 9-3, and a couple batters later, the second base umpire had to call a runner out when he was safe just to make it all stop.
They played three more innings because the rules mandate they must. But as a special reward for those who stayed all the way to the end, Colt Emerson hit a three-run home run when the game was one strike away from being over.
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