Julio Rodriguez was, at most, an inch away from taking away Trent Grisham’s first home run in the third inning. The ball, instead, caromed off the tip of center fielder’s glove and just over the T-Mobile Park fence at the deepest part of the yard.
Emerson Hancock was, at most, an inch away from preventing Grisham’s second home run in the fifth inning. Hancock’s 0-2 slider appeared to catch the inside corner of the strike zone. Home plate umpire Nate Tomlinson, instead, called it a ball.
On the next pitch, Grisham sent a 94-mph fastball out for his second homer of the game, to almost the exact same spot in center field.
And that opened the dam in the top of the fifth inning. The lesson here: Give ‘em an inch, and those damn Yankees will take a mile.
The New York Yankees poured it on after Grisham’s second blast, scoring six runs on six hits off Hancock in that fifth inning en route to an 11-5 victory over the Mariners in their series opener Monday night.
Swept by the Toronto Blue Jays over the weekend, the Mariners (22-18) were blown out for a second day in a row.
The M’s have lost a season-high four consecutive games and they’ve been outscored 32-12 in those four losses.
Hancock was solid through four innings, allowing one run on two hits with four walks.
The Mariners led 2-1 going into the fifth inning after homers by Rodriguez and Jorge Polanco off Yankees starter Clarke Schmidt.
Rodriguez hit a 433-foot blast out to left-center, 110.4 mph off the bat for his seventh homer of the season. It was his third homer in his last 12 games to continue his recent surge.
Polanco pulled a line-drive homer out to right field for his 10th home run in just 113 plate appearances.
The Mariners, though, squandered a prime opportunity to add more in the second inning when they put two runners in scoring position with one out. But Dylan Moore struck out and Ben Williamson flew out to strand the runners.
In the decisive fifth inning, in their third time facing Hancock, the Yankees thoroughly battered the Mariners’ right-hander.
Grisham’s leadoff homer started a string of five straight hits — and seven straight balls in play considered “hard” contact (95 mph or greater) by MLB Statcast metrics. Of those seven, five were hit at least 100 mph.
Yankees catcher Austin Wells delivered the back-breaking blow with a three-run homer to center field, 105.7 mph off the bat, to give New York. 7-2 lead.
The contact off the Yankees’ bats was persistently loud all evening. And so were the robust “Let’s Go Yankees!” chants breaking out among the crowd of 27,895.
Aaron Judge, looking every bit like Babe Ruth early this season, had a 112.3 mph single as part of that fifth inning. He reached base three times in five plate appearances to raise his OPS to 1.283.
All seven runs charged to Hancock were earned, raising his ERA to 6.91 in six starts. He had allowed three runs or fewer in his previous four starts.
Cal Raleigh’s two-run home run with two outs in the eighth inning — a 420-foot blast for his 13th homer of the season — got the Mariners within 8-5.
They wouldn’t get any closer.
Anthony Volpe extended the Yankees’ lead to 10-5 in the ninth inning when he belted a two-run homer off Troy Taylor.
Judge added a sacrifice fly to make it 11-5. Scoring on the play was Oswaldo Cabrera, who appeared to sustain a significant left leg injury on an awkward slide at the plate.
The game was delayed almost 10 minutes as trainers attended to Cabrera at the plate, and ambulance drove onto the field to take him off.