With the Mariners seemingly three outs away from wasting a brilliant starting pitching performance from Bryce Miller while being held scoreless due to another night of swings-and-misses and squandered scoring opportunities, Mitch Garver turned the looming night of frustration into a walkoff celebration with one swing of the bat.
Garver unleashed on a 3-2 cutter from Atlanta lefty A.J. Minter, sending a ball deep over the wall in left field for a two-run homer and the Mariners to a stunning 2-1 walkoff victory over the Braves on Monday night at T-Mobile Park.
“Good pitching, timely hitting, ‘W,'” manager Scott Servais said. “It’s a nice way to start this series. Obviously, they have a good team. We know that we have a good team and we’re not even moving offensively like I know we can. But you’ve got to still find a way to win these games because our pitching has been fantastic. I can’t say it enough. It’s every night.”
The Mariners gave minimal indication that such a dramatic victory was coming. They’d been held hitless for the first seven innings and somehow managed to not score a run in the eighth inning despite having the bases loaded and one out.
With a 1-0 lead, Atlanta brought in Minter to pitch the bottom of the ninth with normal closer Raisel Iglesias unavailable due to usage.
His first pitch was smacked through the left side for a leadoff single from Jorge Polanco.
It brought Garver to the plate as the winning run. He took three straight balls from Minter and thought he’d drawn ball four.
“That 3-0 pitch felt off and looked off (the plate to me),” he said. “It was probably a perfect pitch.”
Minter fired a 3-1 cutter on the outside corner that Garver took for a called strike. Looking for a fastball up in the zone, Minter instead left a cutter right down the middle of the plate.
Admittedly off to a slower start than he or the Mariners expected, Garver has been grinding through pregame work trying to find consistency at the plate. He had started to hit the ball hard on the road trip, but it was usually on the ground at the third baseman.
“I’ve been chopping some balls lately,” he said. “It’s nature of the beast. This game is brutal and unforgiving.”
Not this time. The ball rocketed off his bat at 107 mph and was a no-doubt homer. He flipped the bat in the air as if it was a mic drop with a feeling of “relief” while his teammates spilled out of the dugout to celebrate and the crowd of 26,452 rose to its feet in a frenzy.
“That was my first career walkoff home run in professional baseball so that was pretty special for me,” he said. “In a time where things aren’t going my way and I’m not feeling quite like myself, to be able to come through for the team in any way, shape or form is like a huge ‘W,’ so I was really happy for that.”
Garver came into the series opener vs. the Braves with a .122/.280/.293 slash line in his last 13 games with a double, two homers, three RBI, eight walks and 15 strikeouts.
“For me, it’s just controlling what I can control right,” he said. “I come in every single day with the same effort and attitude that I can. I can’t chase results. I can’t fight against umpires. I can’t blame people. This is on me and I have to do this myself. It’s on nobody else.”
It was really the only highlight produced by a Mariners offense that managed to squander a bases-loaded, no-outs situation in the eighth inning.
For the first five innings, Atlanta starter Max Fried and Seattle starter Bryce Miller flirted with no-hitters.
Fried pitched six hitless innings with two walks and seven strikeouts. He was coming off a complete-game shutout of the Marlins in his previous outing.
Miller was perfect through five innings, retiring the first 15 batters he faced with efficiency and power. His bid at a perfect game ended with one out in the sixth inning when he walked Travis d’Arnaud on four pitches.
“I was frustrated with the walk,” Miller said. “It was one of those things where I saw how he reacted to the first pitch. So, then I’m like, ‘Alright, I guess he’s not swinging.’ So, then I’m just going to throw it down the middle. And instead I throw four straight balls.”
But that first base runner was erased immediately when Miller got Jarred Kelenic to hit into a 4-6-3 double play to end the inning.
Miller’s bid for a no-hitter and shutout ended in the seventh inning. Ronald Acuña broke up the no-hit bid when his hard ground ball up the middle couldn’t be fielded cleanly by Dylan Moore’s lunging attempt. Given Acuña’s elite speed, he likely wouldn’t have beaten it out had Moore made the play. The official scorer ruled it an infield single, which elicited a smattering of boos from fans when the scoreboard showed a hit for the Braves.
Miller allowed his first run moments later. Acuña stole second, then stole third and jogged home when Ozzie Albies roped a double into the gap in right-center for a 1-0 lead.
Unlike some pitchers who implode once they lose their no-hit bid and shutout so quickly, Miller regrouped and came back to strike out Austin Riley and Matt Olson. He ended his outing, getting Marcel Ozuna to fly out to right field.
“To get the next three guys out, that was fantastic,” Servais said. “That just shows me so much with where he’s at maturity-wise. So many guys when they have a night like that going and it starts to get away from them, they just lose it. And he did not.”
Miller’s final line: seven innings pitched, one run allowed on two hits with a walk and 10 strikeouts.
The Mariners tried to answer in the eighth. Ty France worked a leadoff walk off righty Joe Jimenez. Josh Rojas broke up the no-hitter with a pinch-hit single through the right side. After Luis Urias struck out, pinch-hitter Luke Raley followed with an infield single to load the bases for the top of the order.
But Julio Rodriguez hit a fly ball to left field that wasn’t deep enough for pinch runner Leo Rivas to tag up and score on, and Mitch Haniger struck out to end the inning.
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