Mariners open Félix Weekend with a bang, win big over Orioles 9-2

With the AL-leading Orioles in town, King Félix in the building, the stadium lit up in the City Connect colors, and 36,203 paying fans eager to see some fireworks on and off the field, the Mariners opened Félix Weekend with a decisive 9-2 victory where the game outcome was never really in doubt. It was the eighth straight win for the Mariners, the first time they’ve recorded eight consecutive wins since their 14-game winning streak last July that helped propel the team to the playoffs.

The Mariners made some noise off Kyle Gibson early, opening with Julio cracking a ball to deep center that Cedric Mullins made an athletic leaping play on, throwing up the “no fly zone” sign to the J-Rod Squad. After Eugenio Suárez singled, though, Mullins couldn’t do anything about this monster blast off the bat of Cal Raleigh:

The Mariners kept the pressure on Gibson in the second, although they didn’t manage to manufacture a run out of a one-out infield single from Cade Marlowe followed by a single from José Caballero, pressed into service as a Dylan Moore was a late scratch with a personal issue, as Josh Rojas grounded into a double play to end the inning.

However, those early stress pitches for Gibson paid off in a big way in the fourth, when the Mariners hung five runs on the O’s, making it back-to-back games where they’ve scored five or more runs in an inning, something they hadn’t done since June of last season. Ty France led off with my favorite thing for Ty France to do: reach on an infield hit. It’s like watching a dog play the piano and it will never cease to delight me. Dominic Canzone then singled past a diving Gunnar Henderson at short, and Cade Marlowe attacked a first-pitch curveball for a single. Josh Rojas then got his first hit as a Mariners, breaking an 0-for-14 stretch that probably felt longer to him than anyone else.

With the lead up to 4-1, Julio decided that wasn’t quite enough breathing room and put one where Mullins couldn’t take it back:

The O’s opted to make Gibson wear tonight’s start rather than tap into the bullpen early, and an inning later, Ty France opted to make Brandon Hyde pay for that decision:

To me, given the power in the O’s lineup, I didn’t feel like the game wasn’t quite in “laugher territory” yet, even with an 8-1 lead. Josh Rojas’s first “double” as a Mariner an inning later did, in fact, make me laugh (can one have a sun double when it’s dark outside?), and also pushed the game into indisputably laugher territory when Julio brought Rojas home on a double to make it 9-1 and finally knock Gibson, who had been left to twist in the wind the past few innings, out of the game. Jacob Webb managed to contain the damage to just the one run, striking out Eugenio and Cal, and Triple-A callup Nick Vespi worked a scoreless inning-plus as well, but by that point, the…