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Business hustler types like to say there’s nothing but happiness, just hashtag-the-grind, if you sleep more than five hours a night you slack off, if you get less than five side hustles you slack off, buy those ketones to get energized and #crushyourMonday! But most of us know that success comes from hard work, yes, but also from a good dose of luck: finding the right job at the right time, working under a boss who can recognize your talents and help you develop a skill to develop, which is in demand in the industry. Baseball is a lot of skill, but also a lot of luck, and today for a good chunk of the game the Mariners were on the wrong side of the lucky dragons that no amount of ketones or compression stockings can save.
Everyone makes mistakes, and it takes a bit of luck to mitigate those mistakes. George Kirby was excellent today, apart from one or two mistakes which unfortunately would hang over his head as the game progressed. In the first inning, Kirby took a while to adjust to his command and started the game with a rare walk to Tony Kemp. Ramón Laureano then dove a small wounded duck single into right field (exit velocity: a blazing 72.8 MPH) to put two no outs, pushing the speedy Kemp into third before a sacrificial fly from Sean Murphy took him home brought. A walk; a bad luck Dunkaroo single in a good spot; a pitch that caught a little too much of the plate for a sack fly, and that would be A’s first run of the game. Thanks to George Kirby (and Ryan Borucki and Diego Castillo), it would also be her only run of the game.
In the second, Kirby would allow Vimael Machin to reach by trying to go to his fastball too many times, missing one for Machin to jab through the 5/6 hole. He would then retire the next 13 batters, hitting five of those 13 en route to a nine-strikeout day with a season-high before Sean Murphy hit an infield single to start the seventh — a hit with a .030 xBA . Unhappy! But again, Kirby proved he could make his own fortune by rebounding Stephen Piscotty before pulling back Stephen Vogt and Skye Bolt to clear seven innings with just that one run from the first inning.
Unfortunately, that one run turned out pretty big because once again the Mariners couldn’t get away from the starting pitcher, in this case former Mariner Paul Blackburn. The Mariners had chances: To start the game, Julio took the first pitch he saw from Blackburn right in the middle, then stole the second and crashed to take third place. But you pretty much know how things end when the Mariners have a third-place runner with no one outside. It wasn’t exactly sheer offensive failure this time – Eugenio Suárez hit the ball sharply but squarely into the shortstop’s glove, who easily thrown himself over to put Julio in third place.
The Mariners had another chance in the second round when an Adam Frazier ground-rule double ricocheted over the fence, holding Abraham Toro with two outs at third base and setting the stage for another unlucky Mariners LOBster who going into the cavernous pot of 2022. That wouldn’t even be Frazier’s first bad luck today: Cal Raleigh doubled in game seven and knocked out Blackburn, and Abraham Toro brought out new reserve Domingo Acevedo to put the runners in the corners with just one out. Frazier, the unhappiest boy in Seattle, then played unaided at first. Baseball! Sometimes (often) it kicks you in the teeth, and you can’t outsmart or outwit it.
But sometimes life finds a way. Or more specifically, AJ Puk finds a way to blow it against the Seattle Mariners.
Aside from being Upton’s first home run as a mariner, it was also Justin Upton’s first home run of his career. Sometimes all you really need is a bit of luck and also to run into a fastball at the right moment.
Upton’s homer threw Kirby off the hook, which would have been a very tough loss considering how well he served, but it wasn’t going to be enough. Eugenio Suárez started with a walk from Lou Trivino, and then Carlos Santana worked with a groundball single for his second goal of the day. Then a little more luck was needed: Cal Raleigh stepped up to the plate before a five-infielder shift and made a bad swing decision, chasing the first throw he saw from Trivino off the edge of the plate and hacking it down the middle. However, the normally sovereign Nick Allen couldn’t handle the pitch, allowing Cal to reach safely and save an out for the Mariners. In a way, it felt like revenge for Cal’s work all day: he stole several strikes for Kirby, made a great running catch on a lazy popup at a crucial moment and had previously hit the double. Just another quiet day for Raleigh who thankfully wasn’t penalized for his one mistake. That brought up Abraham Toro, someone who could use a good dose of luck himself: His expected metrics lag his actual metrics by as much as 100 points (his slugging: xSLG of 0.451 vs an actual slugging of 0.333) and he was the poster boy /scapegoat on Mariners Twitter for the recent offensive struggles for this team.
Not today, bad vibes; Abraham Toro, our beloved, is in full effect.
Sometimes you’re lucky, sometimes you’re good, but usually you have to be both to win baseball games. I’m not sure what the exact breakdown of luck vs goodness is today (especially given A’s badness), but I’ll take the W and not look back.
