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GAMEFLOW

In the top of the 1st, the Dodgers scored a bit of a tough run on an Erasmo Ramirez that had not yet found his starter's rhythm.  A leadoff walk, a grounder moves him over, another groundout for two out, and then a ground ball finds its way up the middle to score the leadoff man Joc Pederson.   With our offense, you had to wonder how long that early lead would hold up.

But in the bottom of the first the M's went nuts.  Haniger with a walk, then an out, then Robby Cano singles sharply off the glove of the 3B putting men on first and third.  Boomstick showed his 60 HIT tool with a line drive to RIGHT field for a tie game --- > and then Kyle Seager gets a mistake, and drills it into the right field bleachers.  4-1 M's and already the taste of Friday's awful game was rinsed out of Dr. D's mouth.

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So with a three-run lead and 8 innings to go, it came down to how Erasmo would throw.  You'll remember that despite his 5 IP, 0 ER performance LAST time out, Dr. D thought the pitches lacked purpose, danger and intent.  No such problem this time.  He threw his change with conviction and mixed in his slider/cutter intelligently.  The line was 5 ip, 3 hits, 1 run, despite a 3:4 CTL.

He threw 24 changes, 29 curves/cutters against 37 fastballs and Dr. D was tickled pink.  It reminded of last year's run, when Erasmo was given 10 late starts to close the year, and ran a 3.84 ERA in 58 innings with a sparkling 49:15 CTL.  At the time the idea was that he had found a cut fastball to keep the batter-lean off his fastball.  Two starts into the year, it looks promising for him again.

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All good things must end, and Alex Colome's huge 20-appearance scoreless streak came to a screeching halt as he coughed up 2 in his 8th inning.  Making matters worse, Edwin Diaz took another "tough save" -- a 1-run margin to work with -- and gave up the tying run. 

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If I'm not mistaken, every game that has "featured" a Diaz blown save this year, the M's have gone on to win.  Here too, Adam Warren managed to hold off the Dodgers in the 10th and then the M's remembered how to generate traffic.  As in the first, Mitch Haniger led off with a walk, whereupon Robinson Cano singled.  Tolja the lad was good at baseball.

1B and 2B with one out, Nelson Cruz showed his 60 hit tool by walking on close pitches and Kyle Seager, mighty Casey, advanced to the bat.  Dylan Floro decided he didn't want to face a Seager grand slam, and committed the year's most obvious balk.

So the walk-off balk saved Floro from a worse fate -- a walk-off sac fly, or double down the line, or shot into the bleachers, or what have you.  And the Mariners had salvaged a big game from the LA series.

Enjoy,

Dr D