Robbie Ray vs. Aaron Nola
After getting the doors blown off them last night en route to an MLB-leading five shutouts, the Mariners attempt to regain some semblance of respectability in Game 2 against the Fighting Phils. Unfortunately, they’ll have a tough row to hoe in that respect, facing off against one of the game’s better pitchers in Aaron Nola.
Hooray, J.P. Crawford is back! But boo, I don’t think I like relegating Julio back to hitting sixth, and I don’t think he deserves it after being the lone Mariner to record an extra-base hit last night.
Today’s pitching matchup features a pair of pitchers who have maybe seen their days of total dominance pass them by—Nola from the 2018 campaign where he came in third in Cy Young voting, and Ray fresh off a Cy Young victory—but who can both still fling it. Today I wrote about how I expect Robbie Ray to continue an upward trend he’s been on since the beginning of the season with regards to his fastball velocity and called strikes/whiffs (CSW%), so I’m excited to see how the baseball gods will reward this hubris and if it will be anything like when I said Jesse Winker can’t possibly continue to get this unlucky and he lined into a triple play the very next day. Speaking of Winker, he and the rest of the Mariners will try to get right after last night’s embarrassing shellacking, but will face a tall task in doing so against Aaron Nola, as Jake wrote about in the series preview.
Tonight’s game starts at 6:40 PT and will be televised on ROOT Sports NW as usual, with Aaron Goldsmith and Mike Blowers on that call; Dave Sims and Rick Rizzs will handle the radio duties over on 710 Seattle Sports. As a special treat, Nicest Man in the World and Heartthrob of 90s Moms Everywhere, Dan Wilson will be on the broadcast, on radio for the first two innings and on TV for the rest, which is like the Mariners broadcast team giving us a nice ice cream after we fell down and scraped our knees 9-0.
Please keep the words of Lucille Bluth in mind, Mariners offense: