You walk a man to get to the big boy. That’s the math. Sometimes the math bites you square in the jaw.
Cal Raleigh stood at the plate in the seventh inning Monday night with the bases loaded and a grudge. Reds manager Tito Francona — well, the Reds dugout, anyway — had just ordered lefty Caleb Ferguson to intentionally walk Dominic Canzone, packing the bags to face Raleigh instead. First pitch. Hanging breaking ball. Four hundred and eight feet into the left-field bleachers. 7-0, ballgame, everybody go home.
It was Raleigh’s sixth career grand slam and his 10th home run of the season, the exclamation point on an 8-0 Mariners win that pushed Seattle (51-50) above .500 for the first time in nearly two weeks and a half-game ahead of Texas in the AL West.
George Kirby did the heavy lifting before the fireworks. The right-hander needed just 80 pitches to get through six scoreless innings, striking out six and walking one — his sixth straight quality start. Three relievers — Nick Davila, Cole Wilcox, and Michael Rucker — handled the final three frames without surrendering a hit, completing a three-hit shutout.
The Reds barely threatened. Shortstop Edwin Arroyo was the only Cincinnati hitter to reach third base, and he got thrown out at home by right fielder Victor Robles on a shallow fly ball in the third inning. That’s the kind of night it was — a catcher’s mitt and a lawn chair for the Seattle defense.
Seattle scratched across single runs before the blowout. Rodríguez drove in the first with a fifth-inning single off Reds starter Andrew Abbott (5-6), though he exited shortly after for precautionary reasons. Colt Emerson, filling in for a late-scratched J.P. Crawford at shortstop, lofted a sacrifice fly in the seventh to make it 2-0. Weston Wilson, who entered for Rodríguez, added an RBI single before Raleigh’s slam put the thing out of reach.
Eugenio Suárez, back in Seattle after parts of three seasons with the Mariners, got a standing ovation when he led off the second inning. The sentiment didn’t carry over to the scoreboard.
The intentional walk to Canzone was the kind of move that looks clean on a spreadsheet and ugly on a replay. You load the bases, you’re pitching to contact with nowhere to put the batter, and the man standing 60 feet six inches away happens to be one of the most dangerous power hitters in the American League. Raleigh, last year’s AL MVP runner-up, didn’t need a second pitch to remind everyone why.
The series continues Tuesday with Seattle’s Luis Castillo (3-8, 4.93 ERA) facing Cincinnati’s Chase Burns (11-1, 2.54).