The longest night of the season had the strangest of endings for the Mariners.
Leo Rivas hit a walkoff, two-run home run on the first pitch of the bottom of the 13th inning, sending the Mariners to a 4-2 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals on Wednesday night at T-Mobile Park.
It was the first plate appearance of the night for Rivas, who played the unlikely hero with just the second home run of his MLB career.
Rivas, a little-used utility player, had spent most of the season in Triple-A Tacoma. Recalled earlier this month, he hit his first career home run in Tampa, Fla., last week.
He came off the bench as a pinch-runner just a couple innings earlier, and when he stepped to the plate against Cardinals reliever Ryan Fernandez in the 13th, the entire St. Louis infield was expecting a bunt from Rivas.
Instead, fireworks.
The walkoff completed a three-game series sweep for the Mariners (78-68), who have won five in a row and remain one game back of the Houston Astros in the AL West.
The Mariners, incredibly, failed to capitalize on three bases-loaded situations late in the game, scoring no runs despite those promising opportunities in the eighth, 10th and 11th innings.
It was former Mariners reliever Riley O’Brien, a Shorewood High School product, who worked out of bases-loaded jams for the Cardinals in both the 10th and 11th innings.
He struck out Julio Rodriguez and Josh Naylor to escape the 10th and got rookie Cole Young to ground into a double play to end the 11th.
After Jorge Polanco’s scorching double drove in a run off O’Brien in the 11th, tying the score at 2-2, the Mariners had loaded the bases with no outs.
And, yet, nothing came off it.
Emerson Hancock pitched a scoreless top of the 12th, closing out his first relief appearance at T-Mobile Park with a nifty sliding play and a tag on the first-base line to get the final out.
He then pitched a scoreless 13th inning to set the stage for Rivas’ heroics.
The Cardinals’ Iván Herrera, the second batter of the game, launched a solo homer off a hanging splitter from Logan Gilbert to give St. Louis an early lead on the Mariners for the third night in a row.
The Cardinals had a chance to extend that lead in the second when they loaded the bases with no outs after a walk and two soft singles. But Gilbert escaped unscathed after striking out José Fermín, Nathan Church and Lars Nootbaar, letting out a primal yell after getting Nootbaar to swing over a splitter at the bottom to the zone.
It was a pivotal turning point for the Mariners, who answered right back in the bottom of the second.
Josh Naylor, after getting eye drops in his left eye just before his first plate appearance, singled off the glove of Cardinals starter Michael McGreevy to lead off the inning.
Jorge Polanco followed with a sharp single up the middle, and Eugenio Suárez’s soft ground out to second base advanced both runners.
Dominic Canzone then lofted a deep fly ball to left field to easily score Naylor from third, tying the score at 1-1.
Gilbert managed to strand two more runners in scoring position to end the fourth inning to keep the score tied at 1-1, and he was on his way to clearing the fifth inning until his 1-2 splitter hit Willson Contreras in the leg.
That would be Gilbert’s 95th and final pitch of the night. M’s manager Dan Wilson made the call for Carlos Vargas out of the bullpen.
Gilbert allowed only the one run on five hits, with one walk, two hit batters and eight strikeouts. But his 31-pitch second inning led to the early exit with two outs in the fifth.
McGreevy, a rookie, allowed only one run over six solid innings for the Cardinals, allowing five hits, with no walks and four strikeouts.