Mariners rally for opening day win over A's with heroic homers

Ryan Divish, The Seattle Times on Mar 28, 2025

Published in Baseball

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SEATTLE — You can see the phrase on t-shirts at almost any baseball tournament over the summer.

It reads: How to bunt: 1. Don’t 2. Hit a dinger.

Can someone buy Jorge Polanco one of them, size large?

The Mariners’ opening day second baseman in 2024, who turned into opening day third baseman in 2025, turned T-Mobile Park into celebratory bedlam in the eighth inning, smashing a go-ahead two-run homer over the wall in dead center off A’s reliever José LeClerc.

His previous at-bat? A bunt.

Andrés Muñoz closed out the 4-2 victory in the ninth, notching his first save with J.P. Crawford putting the exclamation on the season-opening triumph by turning a game-ending double play.

For most of Thursday evening, the Seattle Mariners seemed to be serving reminders and fodder for angry fans with a tepid offensive showing, looking like the team was headed toward another loss where they failed to scratch out more than a couple of runs.

Down 2-1 in the eighth inning, Randy Arozarena jolted the crowd of 42,871 to life, taking advantage of an 0-2 slider from LeClerc that stayed in the middle of the plate. Arozarena spiked his bat after making contact, turning the mistake into a vapor trail that landed in the upper deck of left field for a game-tying solo home run.

Luke Raley worked a walk to bring Polanco to the plate.

The veteran switch hitter fell behind 0-2 immediately, but wouldn’t give in, working the count to 2-2 and taking advantage of a fastball left over the middle of the plate.

Making his first opening day start of his young career, Logan Gilbert delivered performance that showed why he was chosen for the honor. The lanky right-hander pitched seven innings, allowing one run on two hits with no walks and eight strikeouts. The one run came in the fifth inning when Tyler Soderstrom smashed a solo homer to dead center on a misplaced slider.

Gilbert’s quality start didn’t result in a win. All he had to show for it was a bruise on his “minimal dumper” after taking a 111 mph linedrive on his backside in the third inning.

Gilbert’s counterpart for the Oakland, er, Sacramento A’s was just as good, if not better.

In a somewhat unexpected move not indicative of their normal player investments, the A’s made Hot Stove headlines by signing free agent pitcher Luis Severino to a two-year contract with a player option for a third year that would total $67 million over all three years of the deal.

The A’s new ace produced a quality start in his first official outing. Severino pitched six scoreless innings, allowing three hits – two to Polanco and a blooper to Raley – with four walks and six strikeouts.

The Mariners best chance of scoring on him came in the sixth inning. With one out, Arozarena worked a walk and Raley blooped a single to center to bring Polanco to the plate with the tying run on second base.

In an odd decision of strategy, Polanco, who had two crisp singles off Severino in his first two trips to the plate, sacrifice bunted the runners up 90 feet at the cost of an out.

With the tying run at third and go-ahead run on second, Severino came back to strike out Rowdy Tellez looking on a nasty backdoor sweeper to end the inning.