Mariners Game #100, 7/24/23: SEA at MIN

Today the Mariners start yet another series against the Twins, which to be honest, I am not excited about. The Twins are a super lefty-heavy crew and have found success against Seattle’s oops! all righties rotation, although thankfully Bryan Woo won’t have to make another appearance in this series.

Lineups:

Mariners Baseball Information

Kenta Maeda handled the Mariners with ease in their last meeting, blanking the Mariners through five innings; hopefully, the Mariners batters have figured out some adjustments to make. It will be key for the Mariners to knock Maeda out as early as possible in today’s game and get to the bullpen, which was heavily taxed during an extra-innings win against the White Sox yesterday.

Luis Castillo struck out 11 last time he saw the Twins in the mirror image of this matchup, but also surrendered two home runs and three total runs over six innings; the Mariners would happily trade some of those punchouts for some quicker innings and groundball outs, although hopefully with the heavy, humid air in Minnesota, the ball won’t fly quite as much as it did on that day in T-Mobile Park with that homer-helping wind blowing out to right field, egging on all those lefties.

Read more in today’s series preview (please at least click on it if you have not, the series previews are failing to auto-tweet because Twitter is more focused on bird murder than making sure the API works and it’s killing our page views. I love business!):

Today’s game info:

Today’s game is scheduled to start at 4:40 PT. However, I just pulled up Minneapolis on my weather app and there’s a ton of rain drizzling over the screen interspersed with some scary lightning—either that or my iPhone is going through something—so we’ll see if this game gets started on time. Supposedly the rain will let up by gametime with warm and clear skies later this evening, although with 50% humidity, which, yuck.

You can listen to today’s game if you’re heading home from work on 710 AM Seattle Sports, or stream it via Mariners.com if you’re still stuck at your desk. Aaron Goldsmith and Gary Hill Jr. will have the call there. Today’s game will be televised on ROOT Sports NW, with Dave Sims and Mariners Hall of Famer Dan Wilson on the call. Here’s a story about Dan Wilson: Tucker, the Mariners’ clubhouse dog, is wary of most people and does not like to be pet by adults, but especially men, and definitely hates to be pet on the head (we call him Beltré as a joke), but will tolerate pats on the head from Dan Wilson. That’s just the kind of aura Dan the Man exudes.

Today in Mariners history:

• 1977: John Montague ties an A.L. record by retiring 33 consecutive batters.
• 1993: Jay Buhner hits his 100th career home run.
• 2011: The Mariners set a club record with their 15th consecutive loss. The previous record of 14 was set in 1992.
• 2015: Felíx Hernández ties Jamie Moyer for most career starts as a Mariner with 323. He becomes the first AL pitcher to win 12 games in the 2015 season, limiting the Blue Jays to one run over seven innings pitched while striking out seven in a 5-2 Mariners win.
• 2016: Ken Griffey Jr. is inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Shoulda been unanimous.