Call it a comeback: Mariners bring back 'Chaos Ball' to down Astros

SEATTLE -- “Chaos Ball” has returned to Seattle.

The Mariners quite literally raced to a come-from-behind, 4-2 win over the Astros on Tuesday night with a dramatic effort of the topsy-turvy brand of baseball they’ve embodied in recent years.

A breakdown of the breakthrough:

• Ryan Bliss scored the go-ahead run in the bottom of the eighth, sprinting home on a chopper from Julio Rodríguez. Astros third baseman Alex Bregman then threw the ball away, scoring Josh Rojas and plating a critical insurance run for Ryne Stanek, who pitched the ninth and secured his third save.
• Bliss was only in position to score after going first-to-third on a double from Rojas that nicked first baseman José Abreu’s glove and went into right field. That one scored Jonatan Clase, who pinch-ran for Mitch Haniger after the veteran led off with a double and advanced to third on a wild pitch from two-time All-Star Ryan Pressly.
• Moreover, Bliss only reached base after two failed attempts at a sacrifice bunt that each went foul. He then rallied for a walk while showing impressive discipline -- all front-and-center on just his second day in the Majors.

“One of the best at-bats of the night,” Rojas said. “Especially as a young guy, I mean for any hitter to go down 0-2, it's a tough job to get on base, let alone a rookie. And it was two sac bunts. I've been there before. You get the bunt sign, you go down 0-2 and now all you're thinking is, 'Man, I've really got to get this guy over because I didn't do my job.'”

The late rally preserved another dominant outing from Luis Castillo, who twirled his eighth quality start in his past nine outings and whose lone blemish was a two-run homer to Bregman in the fourth. In this stretch, he’s lowered his ERA from 6.89 to 3.28.

Castillo was backed by scoreless relief efforts from Austin Voth, Tayler Saucedo and Stanek -- who was pitching against his former team for just the second time -- which were just as valuable, especially on a night where Andrés Muñoz was unavailable after pitching on consecutive days.

“Really happy for Ryne Stanek,” Mariners manager Scott Servais said. “Any time you go back against your old team, you get a little bit more pumped up. And the fact that [Muñoz] was down tonight, really excited to give him the ball.”

It wasn’t necessarily pretty, given that Seattle managed just two baserunners from the second through seventh innings, after taking a 1-0 lead in the first when Rodríguez continued his turnaround with a 108.3 mph knock, scoring Rojas. Houston starter Hunter Brown had them off-balance with what Rojas described as “inconsistent spin,” retiring 15 of his final 16 batters.

But Tuesday marked the fourth time in the Mariners’ past 11 games in which they mounted a game-winning rally in the eighth or later, after gritty efforts in Baltimore on May 18, in New York last Monday and in Washington on Sunday.

“What can I say about the team?” Castillo said through interpreter Freddy Llanos. “That eighth inning came, and it felt like the whole team just said, 'OK, now it's time to win.'”

The first-place Mariners have now won three in a row for the first time since April 25-27, on the heels of a season-worst four-game losing streak. They’re also now 4-1 against the Astros this season and 13-5 since the start of last year. And they’re 8-3 this season against the American League West, a division that was arguably the most competitive last year but is off to a slow start in 2024.

“It's kind of how we win games,” Servais said. “We pitch really well, you play good defense and you get some big hits and big at-bats late in the game.”

For all the chaos at the end, the highlight of the night was Luke Raley’s leaping home-run robbery in the second off Jeremy Peña. Houston’s shortstop nearly pulled off a carbon-copy from his solo shot at T-Mobile Park in Game 3 of the 2022 AL Division Series -- the 18-inning marathon, in which his homer represented the game’s lone run and ended Seattle’s storybook season.

But Raley leveraged every bit of his 6-foot-4 frame, some help from the wind and a perfectly timed leap to pull the ball back. And who knows how the trajectory of Tuesday’s game might’ve changed if he hadn’t.