Gonzales twirls one-run complete game

SEATTLE -- The Pacific Northwest might be on the verge of another heat wave this week, but the Mariners on Thursday afternoon inhaled a huge breath of fresh air.

Behind nine brilliant innings from Marco Gonzales and booming homers from J.P. Crawford and Jake Fraley -- as well as another impressive run-manufacturing sequence from Jarred Kelenic -- Seattle surged to a 3-1 win over Texas at T-Mobile Park to clinch a three-game series victory.

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It marked the Mariners’ first complete game of 2021 and the third of Gonzales’ career. He needed 108 pitches to go the distance, facing the minimum in eight of his nine innings. Gonzales racked up a career-high-tying nine strikeouts, including an emphatic one to Jonah Heim -- who tormented the Mariners with walk-off homers less than two weeks ago -- to end the game. And Gonzales surrendered just two hits, well below the six and four he had in his previous complete games.

Thursday’s tilt was shaping up to be another tight one before Crawford and Fraley gave Gonzales breathing room to pitch deeper than he had all season, surpassing his previous high of seven innings on April 20 against the Dodgers. The three-time Opening Day starter continued what has been a dominant stretch of now six starts, over which he’s compiled a 2.13 ERA and has averaged more than seven innings per.

“I've tried to stay on it the whole time,” Gonzales said, “just balancing a lot of things on and off the field, and I’m just fortunate to keep my head down and my teammates kept believing in me. Coaches kept believing in me. I knew that once I felt confident and got the ball rolling, I'd be good. And so I just tried to have faith in the work and in the process.”

So much has changed in Gonzales’ world in the nearly four-month stretch since that outing against L.A. -- a left forearm strain, the birth of his first child and hiccups with his in-between-starts routine -- which is why his start against last-place-yet-pesky Texas continued to show that he’s truly back to being Seattle’s ace.

Before this six-start stretch, Gonzales was 1-5 with a 6.00 ERA and an opposing .915 OPS in his first 10 outings. Since, he’s held hitters to a .204/.253/.358 slash line for a .611 OPS, and a big factor has been a simple one: finding his fastball again.

Just as he did his last time out in New York, Gonzales jammed righty after righty up and in, pitching with conviction and poise at the top of the strike zone. Given his lack of elite velocity, precision is such a huge part of his game, but he was again able to execute -- even with Texas knowing what was coming.

"I'm going to definitely tip my cap to him, but listen, he did exactly what we thought he was going to do,” Rangers manager Chris Woodward said. “I'm just being honest, like, he did exactly what we thought, especially in the beginning of the game. We knew he was going to go hard up-and-in to our righties with the fastball and cutter. He actually gave us a lot of good pitches to hit, we just didn't hit them. We missed a lot of pitches, we popped up a lot of pitches, we got jammed on a lot of pitches.”

Gonzales also pitched without the fear of damage. His lone mistake was on a first-pitch fastball to Charlie Culberson in the second inning that caught too much plate. But he didn’t steer from his game plan and settled right back in. That Culberson homer was one of just four balls in play that were classified as hard-hit out of Texas’ 19 total.

That’s vintage Gonzales, who ranked in the 83rd percentile last year with an average exit velocity of 86.4 mph, but entered Thursday in the 33rd percentile this year, at 89.5.

“It was unreal,” Crawford said. “It makes our job on defense a lot easier when he's doing that. I don't think Kyle [Seager] had to move his glove half the time, and that was probably one of the best games I've ever seen Marco pitch of all the time I’ve been here."

There was emotional motivation on Thursday, also. Gonzales was in front of both his parents -- including his father, Frank, pitching coach for the Rockies’ Double-A affiliate -- who flew in to meet the ace's newborn daughter, Grace, for the first time. Gonzales’ wife, Monica, and many of their extended family were also among the 14,031 on hand.

Getting Gonzales back to his elite form -- if not better than before -- along with the addition of Tyler Anderson, has put Seattle’s starting pitching in a solid place heading into this final seven-week stretch. Justus Sheffield, who is poised to begin a rehab assignment, could return soon as well.

In 11 games this month, Seattle’s starters have a 2.19 ERA, the second-best in baseball -- and a big part of that is Marco getting back to being Marco.