Mariners use chaos ball in 8th, rally for 2nd straight win over Astros

Ryne Stanek didn’t need to look at the third-base dugout at his former teammates as Luke Raley allowed the soft fly ball to left field off the bat of Jon Singleton to nestle into his glove for the final out.

There was no, “Remember me?” moment for Stanek.

He’d spent the previous three seasons wearing a Houston Astros uniform and disliking the Mariners. Now on the other side of the rivalry, it was just about winning.

Instead, he celebrated a dominant and scoreless ninth inning, closing out a 4-2 victory over the Astros at T-Mobile Park. He locked arms with his teammates and participated in the Mariners’ postgame victory dance as the Astros headed for their clubhouse.

“It’s the oddity of it,” he said. “It was something where I used to think, ‘Oh, that’s ridiculous,’ when they would do that. And now, it’s just, ‘Oh, that’s just what we do when we win.’”

Seattle has done some dancing over the last three days, winning the first two games of the four-game series vs. Houston and extending its win streak to three games.

“Mariners baseball, right?” manager Scott Servais said. “Really good pitching, some really big at-bats late in the game, awesome bullpen night again and you look up and we pick up a win. Really happy for our guys grinding through that one.”

The Mariners found a little of the old “chaos ball” magic to take the lead against the Astros in the eighth inning. Down 2-1, Mitch Haniger led off with a double against Astros one-time closer Ryan Pressly and was quickly replaced with pinch-runner Jonatan Clase.

After failing to get a sac bunt down on his first two pitches, rookie Ryan Bliss, playing in his second MLB game, managed to work a walk, refusing to chase anything out of the zone. During the battle with Bliss, Pressly uncorked a wild pitch, allowing Clase to advance to third base.

“Unbelievable at-bat,” Josh Rojas said. “One of the best at-bats of the night, especially as a young guy. For any hitter to go down 0-2, it’s tough, let alone a rookie and it was two sac bunts. I’ve been there before. You get the bunt sign and you go down 0-2, and now you’re thinking is, ‘Man, I’ve really got to get this guy over because I didn’t do my job.’”

With one out and runners on the corners, Rojas ripped a cutter for a ground ball down the first-base line. Astros first baseman Jose Abreu made a diving attempt, but the ball hit off his glove and bounced into the outfield. Rojas raced to second for an RBI double that tied the game.

“I was just trying beat his spin to the spot,” Rojas said. “He threw a well-located cutter and not exactly where I wanted to hit it. I was trying to get it to stay in the air to right center on the spin coming toward me. He located it well down and in, luckily I got it by Abreu.”

Julio Rodriguez provided a two-run lead in unexpected fashion. After getting behind 0-2 immediately, Rodriguez topped a soft ground ball to third on a 1-2 slider with Bliss running on contact. Astros third baseman Alex Bregman fielded the ball and looked to throw home, but saw he had no play with Bliss’ speed to stop the go-ahead run from scoring.

Since Rodriguez was also sprinting to first, Bregman rushed his throw. It went wayward and Abreu didn’t make much of an attempt at catching it, trying to avoid colliding with Rodriguez. It allowed Rojas to race home with an insurance run.

“It’s not always pretty how you do it,” Servais said. “But when you put the ball in play, something can happen. We had a little speed out on the bases, which always helps as well, it put a little bit more pressure on the defense and it paid off tonight.”

Seattle got a solid start from Luis Castillo, who pitched six innings, allowing two runs on five hits with two walks and six strikeouts. The two runs came in the fourth inning. After the Mariners couldn’t quite turn a double play to erase a leadoff runner on a Jeremy Pena ground ball, Bregman hit a fly ball that just cleared the fence in left field for a two-run homer. Left fielder Luke Raley, who had robbed a homer earlier, didn’t quite have a play on it.

They would be the only runs Castillo allowed the rest of the way. It was the ninth consecutive start where he pitched five-plus innings and allowed two runs or fewer. Only Randy Johnson (10 games) and Felix Hernandez (17 games) had longer stretches of those starts in team history.  

“He gives us a chance,” Servais said. “He just keeps us in the game, keeps grinding and as the game gets going along, his stuff gets a little bit better and better.”

But it looked like the two runs allowed might have been two too many when the Mariners could only muster one run against Astros starter Hunter Brown.

The right-hander worked six innings, allowing one run on four hits with a walk and nine strikeouts. Seattle’s lone run off Brown came in the first inning on Rodriguez’s RBI single.

“Hunter Brown was about as good as we’ve ever seen him,” Servais said. “He’s been on a bit of a role after getting off to a rough start this year. But he had all his pitches working.”

Seattle got scoreless relief work from Austin Voth and Tayler Saucedo in the seventh and eighth inning. With Andres Muñoz not available, Stanek got the call.

“It was good,” Stanek said. “I feel like it’s always kind of weird facing the team that you’ve just been on. There’s always like a little bit more pressure that probably nobody else puts on you, but you put on yourself because you want to be like, ‘Yeah, like I got it done and against your old team.’”

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