Cal Raleigh drove in the deciding run with a walk-off fielder’s choice in the 10th inning, securing a 3-2 victory for the Seattle Mariners over the Minnesota Twins on Friday night.
Raleigh hit a ground ball against Twins reliever Cole Sands (2-1). Sands opted to throw home in an attempt to prevent J.P. Crawford from scoring, but the throw was high, allowing Crawford to cross home plate safely.
This marked Raleigh’s fourth career walk-off and his second of the season.
“I swung at a bad pitch and got lucky, but that’s baseball sometimes,” Raleigh remarked. “You just have to make contact. Maybe not the ideal way to do it, but we’ll take it.”
The comeback concluded what initially was a battle between pitchers, with Minnesota’s Bailey Ober and Mariners starter Logan Gilbert impressing early on.
Ober faced the minimum number of batters before issuing two walks in the fourth inning, while Gilbert yielded only three hits through the first five innings.
Seattle took a 1-0 lead in the fifth thanks to Josh Rojas’ RBI double, but Carlos Correa’s two-run homer off Gilbert in the sixth put the Twins ahead.
Gilbert finished his outing with six innings pitched, allowing four hits and two earned runs while striking out three. Ober surrendered one run on two hits, striking out nine and walking three.
Correa’s home run ended Gilbert’s streak of 21 consecutive innings without allowing a run, the longest such streak by any Mariners pitcher this season. It was also Gilbert’s 14th quality start in 17 appearances, the best in the majors. In June, he recorded 31 strikeouts with just one walk in five starts.
