Cal comes up clutch for Mariners in dramatic battle vs. Astros

HOUSTON -- Cal Raleigh takes defeat hard, sometimes personally, and he admittedly dwells longer than most. Especially on those he perceives to be winnable games, like the Mariners’ gut-punch loss in their series opener at Minute Maid Park on Friday.

So when it looked like another late-innings script was steering in Houston’s direction after Seattle led for most of Sunday afternoon, Raleigh seized the opportunity. The backstop crushed an 0-2, middle-middle, 95.9 mph fastball off Josh Hader in the ninth inning to break a tie and lift the Mariners to a tense 5-4 win over the Astros.

“Trying to slow the game down, I think that's the biggest thing,” said Raleigh, who is no stranger to late-inning heroics, having authored one of the most iconic home runs in franchise history. “Those moments can kind of speed up on a lot of guys, including myself. So I just know that slowing it down, trying to take a deep breath and trying to do whatever it takes.”

The victory secured Seattle’s sixth straight series win, its longest stretch since July 21 through Aug. 9 of last year. And as revealing, nearly all of those have been against prominent opponents, the last four of which -- the Rangers, D-backs, Braves and Astros -- were all in the postseason last year.

“I’d like to finish one off with a sweep,” Raleigh said, perhaps in a nod to Friday, when the Mariners blew a 3-1 lead in a seventh inning that included a critical throwing error of his own. “You have your few minutes of reflection. You replay things in your head. For me, I usually take a little longer than some other people, but you try and do whatever it takes. You go over things that you kind of make adjustments on, and then [you] try to get away from it and the next day come to the field.”

Even with the Astros sinking to 10 games under .500 and seven games back of the first-place Mariners in the American League West, this weekend -- especially given its stinging start -- carried weight. After going 7-32 at Minute Maid Park from 2019-22, including the postseason, Seattle is 8-2 in Houston since the start of last season.

"That team, they're going to be right in the hunt of it in September,” said Raleigh, who leads the Mariners with eight homers, including four from the right side. “I know they are. They're a long way from being done."

Sunday’s highlight from “Big Dumper” followed the first homer from Luke Raley since he joined the Mariners in an offseason trade. It also helped wipe away the sour end to Bryce Miller’s outing after he cruised most of the afternoon before giving up a pair of towering two-run homers to lefty-hitting Kyle Tucker and Jon Singleton in the sixth and seventh, respectively.

Miller was receiving treatment when Raleigh went deep, marking his second straight start in which he watched from the trainer’s room as a teammate hit a game-winning homer after Mitch Garver’s walk-off against Atlanta on Monday.

“I need to do arm care the whole game, I guess,” Miller joked.

The second homer Miller allowed ended the Mariners’ streak of 21 straight games in which their starters had surrendered two earned runs or fewer, tied with the 1917 White Sox for the second-longest such streak in Major League history. Had the right-hander escaped with just the one homer, the club would have tied the 1915 Washington Senators for the record.

In that 21-game stretch, dating back to April 10 at Toronto, Seattle’s pitching staff carried an MLB-best 1.68 ERA with 52 walks and 198 strikeouts in 188 innings. Its 45 runs allowed were 23 fewer than the second-best Dodgers in that run.

“It’s pretty special,” Logan Gilbert said after throwing eight scoreless innings on Saturday. “It’s exciting when it’s your turn because you want to just keep it going.”

Despite Sunday’s win, the Mariners recognize there’s still great room for improvement, especially after only cashing in five of their 17 baserunners in the finale. Yet they put together arguably their most complete offensive performance the night prior when ambushing two-time All-Star Framber Valdez.

“We're still not clicking offensively,” manager Scott Servais said. “We're starting to make some strides.”

The Mariners will now go for seven straight series wins against the Twins, who had a 12-game win streak snapped by the Red Sox on Sunday.