ANAHEIM -- The first-place Mariners have ridden an elite pitching staff to the top of the AL West, but have been waiting for the bats to come around as the All-Star break approaches.

Seattle entered Thursday’s game with the third-lowest run total (360) and OPS (.663) in the Majors, ahead of only the last-place White Sox and Marlins. A few ways to fix the Mariners’ offensive issues? Put the ball in play more, crush the baseball and score early and often.

The Mariners plated four runs in the first inning and continued to score at will in a dominant 11-0 win over the Angels -- the most runs Seattle has scored in a game this season. One common theme throughout all the scoring was consistently loud contact and putting the ball in play, especially against Jack Kochanowicz, who was making his big league debut.

The first five Mariners batters reached to begin the game (four singles and one hit-by-pitch), something they hadn’t done since Aug. 3, 2022, against the Yankees. Each hit was classified as hard-hit (95-plus mph exit velocity) and signaled a sign of things to come.

“Really good ballgame tonight," manager Scott Servais said. "We jumped all over the young rookie starter. The guys were really aggressive early in the game and got some good pitches to hit and put great swings on them."

Batting from the left side, Cal Raleigh led off the third with his 18th home run, a ball that left his bat at a scalding 113.9 mph, making it the hardest-hit home run by a Mariner this season and tied for the second-hardest hit homer in his career. Raleigh homered again in the sixth inning from the right side -- a 113.8 mph shot -- giving him his second multi-home run game in three days.

“Raleigh’s on some kind of heater. It’s hard to hit home runs from both sides of the plate and do it a couple of times in three or four games,” Servais said. “He’s been phenomenal. He has that in him. When he gets hot, it gets rolling.”

In the process, Raleigh became the first player with a 110-plus mph home run from each side of the plate in a game since Statcast began tracking in 2015, according to MLB's Sarah Langs and Jason Bernard. It also pushed Raleigh’s home run total to 19, the most among all catchers this season.

In both multi-homer games this week, Raleigh homered from both sides of the plate, which he’d only done once before this season. Raleigh struggled from the right side coming into 2024 but said he put a lot of offseason work into making him a more complete hitter in both boxes.

“I worked on it this offseason. I kind of made it a point of emphasis,” Raleigh said. “I think getting more reps and feeling comfortable knowing I was going to get right-handed at-bats was really big.”

Raleigh was just one of many Mariners hitters with a huge offensive night. Julio Rodríguez reached base four times on a double, two singles and a walk. Rodríguez’s double left his bat at 113.1 mph, his third-hardest hit ball of the year. J.P. Crawford, too, got in on the action when he drilled a ball 108.2 mph into the right-field pavilion in the fourth inning.

After having five batted balls hit 113-plus mph the entire season entering Thursday, the Mariners exceeded that mark twice with Raleigh and Rodríguez’s crushed balls.

Thursday’s game illustrated the importance of the Mariners getting the ball in play more. Crushing baseballs has not been an issue -- Seattle entered the day with the third-best hard-hit rate (42.5 percent) and seventh-best barrel rate (9.1 percent). The larger issue is simply getting the ball in play.

Entering the game with the worst strikeout rate in the Majors (28.3 percent), Seattle hitters only struck out five times in 38 plate appearances -- a minuscule 11.6 percent strikeout rate compared to their season average.

Meanwhile, Luis Castillo was dominant in six scoreless innings, making it just one run allowed across 12 2/3 innings in his last two starts. Castillo relied heavily on his four-seamer and sinker, throwing his fastballs 75.6 percent of the time, up from his season average of 60.7 percent.

“I’ve always said that the game kind of speaks to you as it goes on, and that was one of the keys I figured out,” Castillo said through translator Freddy Llanos. “We knew the fastball was going to be important.”