Evans, heart of the order make quick work of the other Washington team.
Two wrongs don’t make a right, but one right did make nine lefts look oh so wrong in Seattle.
Logan Evans was efficient, effective, and exuding confidence on Tuesday in a dominant 9-1 Mariners victory over the Nationals. Evans allowed one run on four hits and sailed through eight innings in the longest outing from a Mariners starting pitcher this year. Every batter in the Nationals lineup stood in the left-handed batter’s box, making Evans the first Mariners pitcher to face all lefties in more than two decades. Whatever handedness advantage the Nationals hoped to gain never materialized.
“I felt like I could attack each and every one of them with the same game plan, maybe with a few adjustments,” Evans said. “It was easy to get in a rhythm just knowing that every single hitter will be on that side, and I’m going to attack them with the same game plan.”
Evans pounded the zone with all five of his pitches but mostly relied on what he called his “three-headed monster” — a curveball, a sweeper, and a gyro-slider (Baseball Savant labels it a cutter). Cal Raleigh said Evans’ ability to land his full arsenal for strikes, with a variety of spin and movement, is part of what made him effective Tuesday.
“It’s hard, even if you are looking for stuff like that as a hitter, you don’t know what you’re going to get and it makes it really difficult,” Raleigh said.
Evans blazed through the first seven innings in just 69 pitches and sat down more than half the batters he faced on three pitches or fewer. He threw 65.9% of his pitches in the zone — the most for a Mariners starting pitcher this year. He ran into a bit of trouble in the eighth, allowing a leadoff walk and a double, which ultimately prevented the Mariners first complete game since July 4, 2023. But he worked out of the jam unscathed with a strikeout, a lineout, and a flyout. Eduard Bazardo threw a clean ninth inning to seal the win.
Dan Wilson noted Evans’ quick tempo after the game.
“He keeps the hitter moving,” Wilson said. “When you get ahead and are moving quickly, the hitter has to make a decision quickly, and he was making that possible all night long. He executed the game plan that he and Cal wanted to execute.”
Evans’ performance Tuesday was certainly the best in his young career. He finished with a Game Score of 71 — the sixth highest mark from a Mariners starting pitcher in 2025.
Evans was able to pitch so aggressively, in part, because the Mariners offense scored early and often. They got out to a 3-0 lead in the bottom of the first with the Post-Retool Dream Sequence: J.P. Crawford leadoff with a flare single to left, Julio homered him home, and Raleigh made it back-to-back with a 112 mph sky scraper that seemed to disappear into the upper deck. Raleigh made it 4-0 in the fifth inning with his second homer on the day.
The Mariners would add three more runs in the sixth and two in the eighth, taking advantage of the Nationals porous infield defense on multiple occasions. Julio collected three hits (and a barreled out), Crawford added two walks to his single in the first, and Raleigh finished the day with 19 homers, second most in MLB behind only Shohei Ohtani with 20. While the lineup has cooled in May, the heart of the Mariners order continues to scorch the baseball.
It’s not clear what the rest of the season holds for Evans. As Kate Preusser reported for the site Tuesday afternoon, the Mariners rotation appears to be getting healthier, with Bryce Miller due back this homestand, and ace Logan Gilbert set to begin a rehab assignment soon. Evans is ostensibly the seventh man in the Mariners rotation, but with an ERA (2.84) more three runs lower than Emerson Hancock (5.95), it’s possible he’s moved up on the depth chart.
Some have wondered if Evans’ performance has been enough to convince the Mariners to adopt a six-man rotation going forward. General Manager Justin Hollander shut down that idea in a media scrum before the game.
“I would not anticipate a full six man rotation,” Hollander said. “There may be times where we drop in a sixth starter, but I think we will stick with a five man rotation, at least how we’re headed right now.
“The unfortunate thing about the roster rules is you only get 26 spots, and you only get 13 pitchers. And when you add a sixth starter, you take away a reliever. When you add a sixth starter, sometimes your starters pitch every six days, sometimes they pitch every eight or nine days. Starting pitchers are fussy. They don’t like that. They like to stay on a regular schedule. They like to know when they’re pitching.”
While Evans hasn’t allowed many runs this year, he also hasn’t shown the ability to miss bats or suppress contact consistently. He generated only five whiffs on Tuesday and gave up 11 batted balls with an exit velocity of 95 mph or greater, for a hard hit rate of 50%. Nationals batters collected just two hits on their hard hit balls, including two barreled outs. Evans wasn’t always so fortunate, however, as James Wood turned around a middle-middle spinner in the fourth inning for a 448-foot home run off the batter’s eye — the Nationals only run of the game.
That’s to say, if and when Evans is sent back to Tacoma, the decision won’t be unjustified. There’s still things to work on and another step to take. But Evans, just 23, has already shown the stage is not too big for him, even when opponents’ lineups are (literally) stacked against him. “Confidence is key,” he said after the game.
“I’ve always felt like I can do it,” he said. “I’m going to take that approach every single time and think that I’m going to beat you when you step in the box, no matter what you’ve done against me in the past or if I’m just facing you for the first time. Or if there are nine lefties.”