How many runs did the Seattle Mariners lose by in Tuesday night's game against Brewers in Milwaukee? And how many runs did the Mariners themselves score? Don't concern yourself with these matters, this silly fixation on who won the game, and by how much. The true connoisseur understands that witnessing something new every single day is a blessing, and boy did the Mariners—and Brewers, but mostly, if we are being honest, the Mariners—show everyone something unique and special.
Because the Mariners are never the sort of team to leave their fans hanging for a prolonged period of time, they began delivering in the bottom of the first inning. With two outs, William Contreras hit a single to short left field. Milwaukee's third-base coach sent Jake Bauers to home from second, where, as slow-motion replay revealed, Bauers effectively if not necessarily intentionally executed a two-handed punch to remove the ball from Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh's mitt. Thus ensued a mad scramble back to the plate, conveyed here via freeze frame:
Upon review, the run scored. To add insult to injury to Raleigh's broader situation, the official scorer also saddled the Big Dumper with an error. This was a play that felt very consequential and controversial at the time. Imagine if it wound up being the winning run of the game. The good news: It wasn't! Thus, any discourse and final judgment on whether the run should have counted was retroactively rendered null and void. The bad news: Well ...
Many events took place between this play in the bottom of the first inning, and the bottom of the eighth inning. However, they were all events that have been witnessed frequently before (home runs, etc.), and do not necessitate attention. Suffice to say that as the Mariners took the field for their final defensive stand, it was with a position player, infielder Leo Rivas, on the mound. MLB's official media/meme Twitter used to post about position players pitching with a sort of ASCII art representation of the dancing salsa girl emoji. Perhaps they began to understand that, in some situations, there's nothing funny about it at all.
With one out in the bottom of the eighth, Christian Yelich came to the plate to face Rivas for the second time in the inning. Rivas served Yelich eephus after eephus, as he had the previous time. Yelich flicked his sixth eephus of the night into deep center field for a sacrifice fly, which would not have been too notable except that Julio Rodríguez forgot the out count. He caught the ball and then chucked it into the seats, ready to call off this whole enterprise. While relatable, it was not most conducive to the whole goal of not allowing runs to score.
The good news is that if there was ever a good time to have such a brain boom, it would be in the bottom of the eighth with a position player pitching. Because Rodríguez was given a throwing error for the play (I'd say! The ball went in the entirely incorrect direction!), Rivas also didn't see an impact on his ERA, which would balloon to 63.00 by the end of the game. The play also would not join the rarefied ranks of the two-run sac fly, demonstrated earlier this year by Elly De La Cruz. Like the other recent notable instance of players on the field forgetting the out count, the scored runs didn't impact the final result of the game. And at least the Mariners weren't at home, so they wouldn't need another sacrificial lamb to come out to pitch another inning. Mercifully, the Mariners failed to accomplish anything of note in the top of the ninth, and freed everyone from the spectacle.
You can always count on the Mariners for helping shift perspective. Does it matter that this game may or may not tie for the most lopsided shutout win since 1887? Do scores themselves matter at all? What the Mariners provided was an expert display in concentrating misfortune into one night, in an attempt to help exorcise demons that may have otherwise cropped up in later, more consequential games. If you are going to punt, punt as far as humanly possible. That's efficiency.
The Mariners are 59-67, which is only four games back from the AL West division lead. I will not make the mistake of declaring that they can only go up from here, but surely there are ways, like 2025's Etsy Witch, to right the ship (Mariners reference). Trying to replicate last year's process, however, feels cynical and ill-advised. Perhaps it's time to start considering ritual sacrifice.
