Mariners Game #20 Preview: St. Louis at Seattle

If you live in the Seattle area today and are thinking about driving your car...don’t do it. Today is an enormous Seattle Sports Super Saturday. Witness:

• OL Reign: Lumen Field, complete 5-2 victory (go Reign!)
• Mariners: T-Mobile Park, 6:40 PM
• Kraken: Climate Pledge Arena, 7:00 PM
• Sounders: Lumen Field, 7:30 PM

As Scott Servais joked in his pregame comments, we’re just missing a basketball game to round out a great day in Seattle sports. Hopefully the Mariners can make their city proud and do their part against the Cardinals today in helping deliver a city-wide sweep.

Lineups:

Mainers Baseball Information

Cal Raleigh and Kolten Wong return to face the righty Mikolas, while the Cardinals counter by moving the lefty Nootbaar way up in the order and add in switch-hitting Dylan Carlson, who has been limited by injury so far this season and only has 41 plate appearances. BC-born former Mariners prospect Tyler O’Neill also gets his first start of the series, to the delight of the large numbers of friends and family he’ll have in attendance.

News and notes from Scott Servais’s pregame presser:

• Sam Haggerty is back with the club after clearing concussion protocol and has been added back to the active roster. As a corresponding move, Cooper Hummel has been assigned to Triple-A Tacoma. Per Servais, Hummel needs to get some rhythm going, and he wasn’t going to get it playing sporadically off the Mariners’ bench—especially a concern if the Mariners want to get him more reps at catcher.
• Servais took time to praise advance scout Sam Reinertsen, who has had a lot to contend with as the Mariners have played several less-familiar NL opponents in a row over this stretch. A former baseball player at Davidson College, Reinertsen was with the Rays as a scouting intern before joining the Mariners as a full-time advance scout in 2020.
• With Dylan Moore still on the shelf for an unspecified amount of time, expect to see the versatile José Caballero spelling all members of the infield—next up, Eugenio Suárez will get a break, sometime on the upcoming road trip.
• Servais also spent a while answering questions about the trident. “My first exposure to it was in the hitting meeting the other day. All the hitters were in there and I walked in and I said...’what do we got goin’ here?’” He describes the trident as heavy, and pointed on both ends, presenting a not-insignificant risk of impaling someone’s foot. Servais is clearly bemused by the trident but shrugs it off. “Have fun, let the kids play.” Will he be holding it? Not unless the Mariners win the AL West.
• Speaking of the trident, you can pick up the trident t-shirt from BreakingT and support LL while you do it!

Tonight’s game information:

Tonight’s game starts at 6:40 PT. As a reminder, the Kraken will be on regular ROOT sports, pushing the Mariners over to ROOT plus (Channel 1253 for those of you with Comcast/Xfinity). Aaron Goldsmith and Ryan Rowland-Smith will have the call there (Mike Blowers is still under the weather). If you’re double-fisting Seattle sports tonight and listening on the radio, you can find the Mariners on 710 AM Seattle Sports with Rick Rizzs and Dave Sims on the call, or stream them over Mariners.com or the MLB app.

If you’re interested in attending tonight’s game you can still find tickets at a get-in-the-door price around $20 on the secondary markets, and a little more than that on the Ballpark App. Tonight is Salute to Armed Forces night with a camouflage water bottle giveaway, and a reminder that no matter how many times I write it, I will always struggle to spell the word “camouflage.”

Kate’s pick to click:

I like Ty France to have a big game after a tough night last night. He was crushing baseballs over the fence in BP today like he’d heard them saying something mean about his mama, so Ty is my pick to shake off last night’s 0-for-4.

Today in Mariners history:

• A pre-web gem, 1977: In their 16th game as a franchise, the Mariners turn their first-ever triple play against the Kansas City Royals at the Kingdome, a 6-3-2 triple play. Darrell Porter grounded to SS Craig Reynolds, who stepped on second to force Amos Otis, and threw to 1B Danny Meyer to double up Porter. Meyer then relayed to C Skip Jutze who tagged out John Mayberry, trying to score from third.
• 1993: Chris Bosio throws the second no-hitter in Mariners history, beating the Boston Red Sox 7-0 in the Kingdome.
• A good day for an ace, 2013: Felix Hernandez recorded his 100th career victory in the Mariners 7-1 win at Houston.