Rodriguez takes optimistic outlook after Mariners' loss
SEATTLE » This was baseball in the future perfect tense: Julio Rodriguez, the youngest and best player on the Seattle Mariners, coming to the plate to save the season. It had to be Rodriguez, didn't it? The phenom would propel them.
One game before, in Houston, Rodriguez had come to bat in the same situation — one out to spare — and ripped a double. The Astros won, anyway, but that was in a conventional game. This was twice as excruciating: bottom of the 18th inning and still no runs for the home team.
Ten innings earlier, Rodriguez had smashed the hardest hit of the day, a 112-mph laser off the left-field wall for a double. Even Jeremy Pena's home run Saturday, off Penn Murfee in the top of the 18th, was not quite as forceful.
But it was more effective, and Rodriguez could not match it, punching a harmless fly out to center off Luis Garcia, ending the game, 1-0, and sending the Astros to their sixth consecutive American League Championship Series.
Pena — who had two-out hits before both of Yordan Alvarez's homers in Houston — has rewarded the Astros' faith in giving him the shortstop job after letting Carlos Correa leave as a free agent.
“Boy, he's been a godsend to us,” Astros manager Dusty Baker said. “And he's only getting better.”
The Mariners believe they are, too. Their 20-season playoff absence had been the longest active streak in baseball, and they have no plans to start a new one.
“I feel like this is just the beginning for all of us,” said Rodriguez, 21, who held his bat all the way to the bench after the final out. “We're definitely going to keep on going and we're going to be back.”
The fans here had waited so long to host the playoffs that, for a while, it seemed the baseball gods had granted them a game that would never end. It was the first postseason game ever to be scoreless through 17 innings, and the Mariners had set a franchise record for strikeouts in a game, with 22.
Rodriguez whiffed three times, but also had the Mariners' only extra-base hit and stolen base. The last three hitters in their lineup were 1 for 21 with no walks. The afternoon shadows did not help, and neither did the fans holding shoes on their heads for good luck (yes, it's a thing here).
Nothing worked for the Mariners: not the navyand-teal towels waving across T-Mobile Park; not a first pitch from their former ace, Felix Hernandez; not not Mike McCready of Pearl Jam performing the national anthem on electric guitar.