Julio Rodriguez can’t do it all. Mariners lose 3-2 in 11 to Tigers to begin ALDS
They stood for every two-strike pitch. From the first inning.
They roared. And they kept roaring. They were the screams of 47,290 letting out 24 years of hope, but mostly frustration.
The Mariners brought out Lou Piniella Saturday night. They brought out Mark McLemore, re-enacting his American flag waving on the field like it was 2001 again.
Then the Mariners did what they’ve been doing for 24 years: Going without a playoff win at home.
The American League West division champions for the first time since Piniella’s and McLemore’s 2001 team won an AL-record 116 games — the comebackers who led the majors in one-run wins this season — lost 3-2 in 11 innings to the Detroit Tigers in Game 1 of the first American League Division Series for Seattle since 2001.
Mariners closer Andres Munoz threw two perfect ninth and 10th innings. That included Munoz catching a line-drive comebacker at his head with his eyes closed.
But manager Dan Wilson wouldn’t dare keep Munoz in for a third inning, the 11th. The M’s need him for the rest of this best-of-five series.
So inexperienced reliever Carlos Vargas replaced Munoz. Vargas gifted the Detroit Tigers a leadoff walk, then a wild pitch. That doomed him, and the Mariners, when Zach McKinstry grounded a two-out single through the middle of the infield. That scored Spencer Torkelson with the go-ahead run. “Can’t walk the first guy of the inning,” Vargas’ catcher and MVP candidate Cal Raleigh said in a hallway just outside a stone-silent Mariners clubhouse after the game. “That’s usually a recipe for a run.”
Keider Montero, Detroit’s eighth pitcher, then retired the top of the Mariners’ order — Randy Arozarena and Raleigh — before allowing a two-out single in the bottom of the 11th to Julio Rodriguez, Seattle’s hero earlier in the game.
Montero then got Josh Naylor to ground out to first base to end it — and silence a roaring, sold-out crowd.
Seattle lost for just the fifth time in 22 home games.
The Mariners disappointed a stadium, a region, full of people desperate for this team loaded with talent and youth to win a playoff series, let alone make the World Series for the first time.
“They were great,” Raleigh said of the fans Saturday night, who began chanting “MVP!” for him 40 minutes before first pitch, while he was simply walking to the bullpen to warm up Kirby to begin the game.
“They’ll be great Sunday, as well,” Raleigh said of Game 2.
“Our job’s to come back...and even this thing back up.”
The Mariners now need veteran Luis Castillo to be what they call him, “The Rock,” on Sunday, to avoid falling behind 2-0 in the series before it goes to Detroit for Game 3 Tuesday. Castillo is their starting pitcher in Game 2 at T-Mobile Park (5:03 p.m., FS1 television) against Tigers ace Tarik Skubal, who just struck out 14 Cleveland Guardians in the wild-card round this week. “It’s difficult,” Rodriguez said. “But we’ve got to come back (Sunday).
“We’ve just got each other’s back. Even if it gets tough we stay together...It’s really huge for us.
“(Sunday) is a new game. And we’re going to be ready for that.”
One silver lining: The Mariners have beaten Skubal twice this season.
“One of our strengths is bouncing back. And we have to do that,” Wilson said. “Skubal is a guy we have seen a couple of times this year. He’s thrown the ball well in Cleveland.
“We’ve got to come right back at them, and bounce back. Our guys are good at that. That’s what they do, and I think we’ll be ready.”
Julio Rodriguez’s blast
While starter George Kirby was throwing 99 mph, striking out eight Tigers and retiring all six batters he faced with runners in scoring position over the first four innings, Seattle’s hitters couldn’t get much off Detroit starter Troy Melton and four relievers through seven innings.
In four of those seven frames, the Mariners went down one, two, three.
Three days after he allowed four runs in a third of an inning of relief at Cleveland in the wild-card round, Melton retired seven straight Mariners from a walk to Josh Naylor in the first inning into the top of the fourth.
Rodriguez then changed that.
The All-Star whose bat exploded after he declined playing in the All-Star Game in July smacked a 97-mph fastball at the top of the strike zone deep into the “No Fly Zone” stands named after the center fielder, beyond right-center field. It was his first career postseason home run, in his sixth career playoff game.
The yard exploded. Like his bat this summer into fall.
As the star who clubbed 32 home runs this regular season crossed home plate with the game’s and series’ first run, Rodriguez, egged on the fans for more noise by pressing the sky, pumping both arms. Then he grabbed the team’s trident trophy for those who hit homers, pumped it to the crowd, too, and paraded through the Mariners’ dugout with it. “They were bringin’ it. They were really bringin’ it,” Rodriguez said of the crowd.
Rodriguez and leadoff catalyst Randy Arozarena brought his Mariners back in the sixth.
With Seattle down 2-1, Arozarena began the bottom of the sixth taking a daddy hack and missing wildly, as he sometimes does. But he re-grouped to draw a leadoff walk off Rafael Montero. Then he alertly read Raleigh’s soft line drive was going to fall in front of the right fielder for a single, and hustled from first to third base.
Rodriguez then singled Arozarena home from there, on the first pitch he saw. The game was tied. “It was just being on time, and ready to hit,” Rodriguez said of his three hits, three of his team’s six.
Where the M’s offense lost
Beyond three-hitter Rodriguez, the Mariners got nothing.
Their four-through-nine batters (Josh Naylor, Jorge Polanco, Eugenio Suarez, Dominic Canzone, Victor Robles/Luke Raley and J.P. Crawford) were 0 for 23 with an inconsequential walk, looking almost entirely overmatched against seven Tigers pitchers. Raleigh said an old Mariners problem from earlier this season, when they were way out of the AL West race they got back in and won, returned Saturday: Swinging too hard, trying to pull pitches to do too much in one swing. Guys trying to yank pitches to Edmonds (right-handed batters) or Mercer Island (lefties) had multiple fly ball thrill the fans but die in the cooler, October marine air on the warning track.
“Maybe just getting a little too big (in our swings),” Raleigh said. “It’s important this time of year, when the adrenaline goes up and the heart starts pounding a little more, you just got to slow the game down.
“Slow it down, do it what we’ve talked about since spring training: Stay through the middle (of the field); easy swings. Dial down. Don’t try to get bigger.”
“I expect the guys (Sunday) to come out and make the adjustment.”
That, like the ultimate result, must change for the Mariners Sunday.
The two team’s bullpens — 10 relievers used, combined — kept the score there until the dramatic finish.
George Kirby’s sudden end
Though Detroit drove up his pitch count early, Kirby was a strike away from another shutdown inning stranding a runner at second base following Rodriguez’s blast.
He and the packed house thought he had Kerry Carpenter struck out on an 0-2 that plate umpire Alex Tosi correctly ruled inside. Carpenter incredibly drilled the next pitch, that Kirby sent 97 mph and almost up his chest as if to get him to chase it, over the right-field wall.
“He did get it up there. Just maybe went to the well one too many times,” Raleigh said of his and Kirby’s chose of a sinker that didn’t sink to Carpenter. “Give credit to him. That was a ball(’s height), or two, above the zone.
“That was a tough one.”
Suddenly the Mariners trailed 2-1. The park sounded like one early on a Sunday morning.
Kirby departed after getting the final out of the fifth. He allowed the 2 runs on six hits with a walk and eight strikeouts. He threw 94 pitches.
That’s why lefty reliever Caleb Ferguson replaced Kirby for the sixth.
Lou Piniella, Mark McLemore return
Just before the first pitch, the Mariners rekindled memories of their last division championship before this year’s.
McLemore walked onto the field carrying a large U.S. flag on a pole — just as the former infielder did on this same infield as the M’s clinched the AL West title shortly after 9/11 in 2001.
Then McLemore’s manager that season came out of the dugout.
Piniella walked onto the field to chants of “LOOOUUUUU!” from the sellout crowd. He stood halfway between the mound and home plate, in front of McLemore and threw the ceremonial first pitch for Game 1.
The catcher for it? Piniella’s catcher from that 2001 Mariners team.
Dan Wilson, Seattle’s current manager.
This story was originally published October 4, 2025 at 9:07 PM with the headline "Julio Rodriguez can’t do it all. Mariners lose 3-2 in 11 to Tigers to begin ALDS."
