Sometimes, ballplayers will do just about anything to change their fortunes.
For Jarred Kelenic, that meant switching his walk-up music to “Take Me Home, Country Roads” by John Denver.
The Seattle Mariners took those lyrics to heart on Monday in an 8-4 victory against the visiting Washington Nationals and will look to do the same on Tuesday as the teams continue their three-game interleague series
“When the crowd gets into it, man, I just feel like, as a team, we just feed off of that,” Kelenic said of his song.
On Tuesday, Jake Irvin (1-4, 4.71 ERA) is scheduled to take the mound for Washington against the Mariners‘ Bryan Woo (1-1, 5.09) in a matchup of rookie right-handers
After failing to score without hitting the ball out of the park while losing the final two games of their three-game weekend series at Baltimore, the Mariners showed off their hitting skills beyond the long ball on Monday
J.P. Crawford and Eugenio Suarez did hit solo homers, but the Mariners also scored a pair of runs on sacrifice flies, moved runners over and took the additional base when they could
“We’ve talked a little bit about where we’re at in the season and what we need to do to put a good streak together,” Mariners manager Scott Servais said. “And it’s no coincidence when you’re selfless like that and you give yourself up for the team and all of a sudden instead of just getting one run, we ended up with three runs that (fifth) inning because we’re doing the right things and executing there.
With the score tied at 3-3 in the fifth, Teoscar Hernandez reached on an infield single to lead off the inning and took second on a throwing error. Cal Raleigh grounded out, with Hernandez taking third. Suarez then drove in the go-ahead run with a sacrifice fly.
“Cal didn’t have a hit but might’ve had one of the biggest at-bats of the night,” Servais said of the groundout.
Kelenic then drew a walk and stole second with a nifty swim move on the slide to avoid the tag. He scored on Mike Ford’s single up the middle.
Kelenic also helped spark a tying rally in the fourth. After Suarez’s homer leading off the inning made it 3-2 in favor of the Nationals, Kelenic followed with a single and distracted Washington starter Trevor Williams enough that the pitcher tried three pickoff attempts. That allowed Kelenic to take second on a disengagement violation
Kelenic scrambled back to second on a lineout to short before scoring on Julio Rodriguez’s two-out single.
“It’s a game-changing-type play,” Servais said of Kelenic’s work on the basepaths. “Jarred plays with a lot of intensity. He brings that edge.”
Lane Thomas and Dominic Smith homered for the Nationals, who came up short in a bid to match their season-high winning streak of three games. They loaded the bases with two outs in the ninth and got Jeimer Candelario to the plate as the tying run. Mariners closer Paul Sewald entered and fanned Candelario looking at a pitch that appeared to be well outside
“We had one bad inning where we gave them extra outs and things got out of hand,” Washington manager Davey Martinez said.
Both Irvin and Woo will be making their first appearances against their Tuesday opponents.
Irvin has pitched at least five innings and allowed only one earned run in each of his past two starts. Woo earned his first victory in his latest outing, when he threw 5 1/3 shutout innings against the New York Yankees on Thursday.
–Field Level Media
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