A rookie left-hander finally reaches the win column
Kade Anderson has been in the majors long enough to hear the questions. On Wednesday he answered one of them. The 22-year-old left-hander held the Texas Rangers to a single run over six innings and walked off with a 3-2 victory, the first of his major league career, in only his fourth start.
The line reads six innings, six hits, one run, one walk, five strikeouts. What the box score leaves out is the standing ovation that followed his last pitch, a strikeout of Jake Burger to close the sixth.
“It was a tight game, so we were pulling for him to get through six (innings) because that is a big boost of confidence there,” Seattle manager Dan Wilson said. “I thought he looked to me like he was almost getting stronger as the game went on, which is always a good sign.”
Anderson credited a shift in approach during the game. “It’s more of a mentality of attacking guys,” he said. “I felt like when I made that adjustment, my velocity shot up, just throwing things more aggressively in the zone.”
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Seattle are already playing for next year
The context is not kind. At 68-78, the Mariners carry a 5.4 percent chance of reaching the postseason according to FanGraphs, which in mid-September turns the remaining schedule into an audition. Anderson, the third overall pick in the 2025 draft after taking LSU to a College World Series title, is one reason to keep watching it.
So is Lazaro Montes. In Tuesday’s 10-5 defeat to the same Rangers, the rookie launched a 474-foot home run, the longest hit by a Mariner at T-Mobile Park in the Statcast era, which runs back to 2015. Two nights, two glimpses of a roster that will look different in April.
Two Stetson graduates close the series
Texas have their own arithmetic to worry about. At 72-74 they are chasing Houston in the division and Cleveland in the wild-card race, and Wednesday cost them: 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position, seven men left on base. Corey Seager and Burger provided the only Rangers runs, both on solo homers.
“The runners in scoring position, we had trouble with today,” Rangers manager Skip Schumaker said. “We didn’t have any hits with any guys on base, and that was ultimately the reason why we lost the game.”
Thursday’s finale in Seattle sends out Jacob deGrom (10-9, 3.96 ERA) against Logan Gilbert (11-9, 3.71), two right-handers who came through Stetson University and who meet for the third time this season. deGrom carries a 2.83 ERA across 10 career starts against the Mariners and has taken no decision in either outing against them this year. Gilbert has lost his last two.
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