Mariners club 3 homers, 9 extra-base hits in win over Guardians

CLEVELAND — They’ve found something, these Mariners hitters. Maybe, even, a repeatable formula.

“We’ve changed our mindset a little bit,” manager Scott Servais said. “And it’s working.”

The blueprint, distilled to its simplest form, is attack.

And, yes, it’s working.

The Mariners’ bats broke out with a season-high nine extra-base hits, featuring home runs from J.P. Crawford, Luke Raley and Dylan Moore, en route to an 8-5 victory Tuesday over the Cleveland Guardians to open a key series between two first-place teams on a humid evening at Progressive Field.

The Mariners (44-31) moved to a season-high 13 games over .500 and improved to 34-5 when they score at least four runs.

They are 12-4 in June, and their lead atop the AL West extended to 10 games after the Astros and Rangers both lost Tuesday night.

Since the club dismissed first-year offensive coordinator Brant Brown on May 31, the Mariners have slugged 22 home runs in 17 games and they are averaging 5.0 runs per game — an uptick of 28% in run production from the season’s first two months.

“Everyone’s up there ready to go from pitch one,” Crawford said. “We’re not being lackadaisical up there. And we’re not missing the pitches we should be hitting.”

Crawford belted a two-run blast that just cleared the wall in right-center field — off the end of the glove of Cleveland center fielder Daniel Schneemann — to give the Mariners a 2-1 lead in the third.

The Mariners ended up sending nine batters to the plate in that third inning, scoring four runs on four hits with two walks and chasing Cleveland starter Triston McKenzie with one out.

Cal Raleigh just missed a home run off McKenzie — a 421-foot blast off the top of the wall in center — for an RBI double, helping the Mariners build a 4-1 lead.

Moore and Crawford hit back-to-back doubles to lead off the fourth inning to make it 5-1.

It was an adventurous game for Raley, an Ohio native with some 50 or 60 family and friends among the crowd of 25,453.

Raley made an all-out catch coming in, diving over the foul line and onto the hard rubber surface in front of the stands to haul in a Will Brennan pop foul for the final out of the fourth inning.

He followed that with an opposite-field home run to left field in the top of the fifth. It was his eighth homer of the season — and, incredibly, the ball was hit directly to his uncle, Scott Profitt, sitting in the front row above the 19-foot wall in left field.

The problem?

Uncle Scott dropped it, and the ball went tumbling back down onto the field.

“He won’t hear the end of that at Thanksgiving,” Raley said. (Uncle Scott was given another ball later in the game as a consolation prize.)

Raley’s night ended a little early after he was ejected — for the first time in his big-league career — in the ninth inning for arguing a strike call with veteran plate umpire Hunter Wendelstedt, who gave Raley a quick hook.

Raley’s ejection came after his father, Doug, was ejected from a game at Progressive Field last year, when his son was playing for the Rays against the Guardians. Luke didn’t wanted to divulge details, but said his dad got in an argument with a fan in the stands and both were asked to leave the ballpark.

“There’s something about this park — it doesn’t like the Raley family,” Luke Raley said.

For Servais, there is a lot to like about what he’s seen from the lineup lately.

Crawford reached base four times and drove in three runs, Mitch Garver had two doubles and two RBI, and Moore had a 402-foot homer, a double and score three runs hitting out of the No. 9 spot in the lineup.

“The offense is definitely clicking better,” Raley said, “and it’s just fun to be a part of right now.”

For most of the game, the Mariners hitters also had more walks than strikeouts — a rarity for them — before finishing with nine strikeouts and seven walks.

“Some teams, they’re going to wait things out and hunt their pitch and all this other stuff,” Servais said. “We just need to get up there and stay on the attack. And when we do that, we trust our eyes, and we usually do swing at the right pitches.”

Andres Muñoz came in and got the Mariners out of a bases-loaded jam in the eighth inning, then closed the door in the ninth to earn his third five-out save of the season, and 13th save overall.

Bryce Miller posted another strong start to pick up his first road win since his first road start back on April 6 at Milwaukee.

The 25-year-old right-hander allowed three runs (two earned) on six hits (all singles) with two walks and two strikeouts.

Miller got in a jam in the sixth inning, and acknowledged he had started to run out of gas with temperatures at the park reaching the upper-80s.

“I was sweating — I probably lost like 10 pounds,” he said.

Austin Voth came in and needed to just two pitches to get the final out of the sixth.

It was a similar situation in the seventh inning, when Ryne Stanek came on in relief of Tayler Saucedo and struck out David Fry on a nasty splitter to strand two Cleveland runners.

It happened again in the eighth, after Trent Thornton loaded the bases with one out. Muñoz came in and got Steven Kwan to hit into a fielder’s choice — driving in a run to cut the Mariners’ lead to 8-5 — and then induced a groundout from Andres Gimenez, stranding the always-dangerous Jose Ramirez on deck.

“This is how we expected to start the year,” Miller said. “And we’re just starting to put it together. I think it’s a really good baseball team. And whenever we throw it and wherever we swing out like that, it’s gonna be tough to beat us.”

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