– by Adesina O. Koiki
A Lot of Sports Talk editor-in-chief
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ARLINGTON, TEXAS — Once the Seattle Mariners waited out Jacob deGrom, they did not wait a second pouncing on the Texas Rangers bullpen.
Julio Rodriguez continued his stellar play at the plate with a two-homer right, leading the Mariners came back from an early deficit to defeat the Texas Rangers 8-2 on Friday night inside Globe Life Field. George Kirby allowed two runs and five hits in six innings of work for his 13th win of the season as the Mariners gained a game on the Kansas City Royals and Detroit Tigers, who both lost earlier in the day, in the Wild Card standings.
“You have to win the games you can win. Tonight, we did what we had to do, celebrated for a minute, then we regroup and we will try to do it again tomorrow,” Mariners manager Dan Wilson said. “We stressed that we can’t get ahead of ourselves, but this was a good one tonight and a good way to start the road trip, and we have a lot of big games ahead of us.”
Seattle is two games in back of Minnesota, who won today, for the third and final Wild Card spot, while the Rangers have officially been eliminated from playoff contention — meaning there will be a new World Series champion.
deGrom, the two-time Cy Young Award winner while with the New York Mets, allowed just one run, a solo homer to Josh Rojas in the third inning, and struck out five batters. Seattle’s offense, which has been a sore spot all season with the lack of production and amount of strikeouts, was patient against deGrom and forced the right-hander to throw 59 pitches in those three innings and eventually led Texas manager Bruce Bochy to remove his starter, who only came back to Major League action last week after Tommy John surgery.
The Mariners soon feasted on the Rangers bullpen, with Rodríguez’s three-run home run off Jack Leiter with two outs in the fifth giving the Mariners the lead for good at 4-2. Seattle scored two runs in both the seventh and eighth innings, with Rodríguez hitting another homer off Leiter in the seventh.
In his past 21 games, Rodríguez is slashing .352/.402/.626 with seven home runs and 19 RBI.
*Editor’s note: Above the byline is the photo gallery from Friday evening’s game, with photos taken by ALOST staff photographer Ross James. After clicking on a photo to enlarge the picture, press the left and right arrow buttons on either side of the caption to scroll through the rest of the pictures that appear on the first page. Also, click on the numbers and/or arrow appearing immediately below the picture grid to load the next set of photos. There are 30 pictures in total.
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