Andrés Muñoz bounces back, Luke Raley homers as Mariners snap skid
Carrying a six-run lead into the ninth inning, the last thing Mariners manager Dan Wilson wanted to do was call on his embattled closer, Andrés Muñoz, with the bases loaded and the tying run at the plate.
It didn't have to end like this.
And yet, it wasn't the worst thing that it did.
Three days after the worst outing of his career, Muñoz needed just four pitches to strike out the Rangers' Brandon Nimmo, stranding the bases loaded and preserving the Mariners' 7-3 victory in what, up until the ninth inning, had been a feel-good evening all around for a sold-out crowd of 45,552 at T-Mobile Park on Saturday.
"It feels a lot better," Muñoz said. "We still have a lot of work to do. I've been working a lot these (last) couple days to get to this point. Obviously, we are not there yet, but it makes me feel a lot better that we are going in the right direction."
The win was, of course, important for the Mariners (9-13), who got a big home run from Luke Raley and contributions up and down the lineup to end a four-game losing streak and bust out of their offensive malaise, at least for one day.
Perhaps just as meaningful, though, was the chance to boost Muñoz's confidence.
The Rangers scored two runs already in the top of the ninth to cut the Mariners' 7-1 lead to 7-3, and then Cole Wilcox walked Kyle Higashioka, Texas' No. 9 hitter, to load the bases with two outs.
Wilson quickly popped out of the dugout and motioned for his closer.
Muñoz got ahead of Nimmo, the Rangers' leadoff hitter, who swung over an 87-mph slider. On his second pitch, Muñoz got a called strike two on a 99-mph fastball.
After Nimmo fouled off another fastball, Muñoz threw another slider that Nimmo swung over for strike three, ending the game with the bases loaded.
We put him in a really tight situation, and he delivered," Wilson said.
Muñoz had been honest and vulnerable about his struggles a couple days earlier after he'd allowed five earned runs in the ninth inning in San Diego on Wednesday night, in what might stand as the Mariners' most stunning loss of the entire season.
For context, Muñoz allowed a total of four earned runs during the first three months of the 2025 season, spanning his first 35 appearances.
Painful at it was, Muñoz rewatched the ninth inning against the Padres, dissecting what went wrong. Back in Seattle, he got back on the mound on Friday and Saturday in the T-Mobile Park bullpen and went through two regular-intensity throwing sessions, an unusual course of action for any reliever during the middle of a season, particularly for a closer as vital to a team as Muñoz is to the Mariners.
Muñoz said he went against coaches' wishes in doing so.
"I just get on the mound," he said. "They always get mad at me because of that, but that is good because they're protecting me, and they know I don't have anything wrong (physically). The way they are supporting me is really awesome. I really need it."
Raley belted his fifth home run of the season, a towering 381-foot blast to right field off Texas starter Nathan Eovaldi to push the Mariners' lead to 4-1.
Dominic Canzone finished 3 for 4 with a key two-run single off Eovaldi in the fourth inning, and Cole Young added a two-run single in the eighth inning to help the Mariners pull away.
J.P. Crawford led off the bottom of the first with a double down the right-field line, moved to third base on a Cal Raleigh groundout to the right side and then scored on Julio Rodríguez's inside-out single to right field, giving the Mariners a 1-0 lead.
The Mariners finished with 11 hits, just their third double-digit hit total in 22 games.
George Kirby continued his stranglehold of the Rangers, allowing only a Josh Jung solo homer in the sixth inning. Kirby scattered seven hits with two walks and five strikeouts over 5 2/3 innings.
In 12 career starts against Texas, Kirby is now 9-1 with a 1.33 ERA and a 60-to-9 strikeout-to-walk ratio.
The Rangers had loaded the bases in the fourth inning after Jung hit a 107.8-mph comebacker off Kirby's backside, a potential inning-ending double-play grounder that instead turned into an infield single.
Kirby walked the next batter, Evan Carter, to load the bases, but then got out of it by getting Ezequiel Duran and Higashioka to fly out to center field.
"Just stay in control as much as possible in those moments," Kirby said. "And try to be the best I can. Not do too much, but just go out there and attack and things usually work out."
With the M's leading 4-1, Eduard Bazardo then got out of a bases-loaded jam in the seventh inning when Jung popped out to center.
Wilson used all of his high-leverage arms, with Matt Brash coming in for the final out of the sixth inning and Gabe Speier getting two outs in the seventh before turning in it over to Bazardo.
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