SEATTLE – Julio Rodríguez hit a two-run homer, his second in three games, George Kirby allowed an unearned run over six innings and the Seattle Mariners held off the Texas Rangers 7-5 on Saturday.
Seattle won for the sixth time in seven games and won its ninth consecutive series at home dating to mid-April. The Mariners also increased their lead over the defending champion Rangers to 7 1/2 games in the AL West. It’s the largest division lead for Seattle at any point since June 18, 2003, when it also had a 7 1/2-game advantage.
Kirby (6-5) didn’t give up a hit until Wyatt Langford’s infield single with one out in the fourth inning. Kirby leaned heavily on a fastball at the top of the strike zone and scattered three hits over six innings. Marcus Semien had an RBI double in the fifth inning, but Kirby finished his outing by striking out the side in the sixth.
“I was spraying it a little bit and those two walks were annoying,” Kirby said. “But I dialed it in when I needed to.”
Rodríguez hit a tying home run in the ninth inning Thursday night against the Chicago White Sox and his power has been on an uptick after a slow start. Rodríguez hit a 1-2 cutter from Texas starter Nathan Eovaldi (3-3) an estimated 412 feet for his seventh homer and a 3-0 lead in the third inning
Dominic Canzone added a two-out RBI single later in the inning, and Cal Raleigh had an RBI single in the first inning as the Mariners knocked out the Texas starter after just three innings.
Josh Rojas had a solo homer in the seventh, his first long ball since April 28, and had a two-run single in the eighth that became critical because of a shaky ninth inning from Seattle’s relievers.
“They have a really good offense and you just got to pile it on as much as you can the whole game because you know at any point they can put together an inning like they did there in the ninth,” Rojas said.
Texas scored four times in the ninth on five hits and a walk and all four runs were charged to reliever Eduard Bazardo. Semien dropped a two-out, two-run single off Ryne Stanek to pull the Rangers to 7-5, but Tyler Locklear made a diving stop on Corey Seager’s grounder at first base and stepped on the bag for the final out.
“They hit some balls, they found some holes and I don’t want that to overshadow all the positives today and there really was a lot,” Seattle manager Scott Servais said.
Eovaldi allowed four runs, four hits and struck out six. But he also struggled with control with four walks in the 17 batters he faced. Eovaldi threw seven innings allowing two runs on five hits in his previous start against San Francisco.
TRAINER’S ROOM
Rangers: C Jonah Heim was placed on the paternity list. Sam Huff was recalled from Triple-A Round Rock to take his roster spot.
Mariners: 2B Jorge Polanco (hamstring) started a rehab stint on Saturday night with Single-A Everett. Polanco is scheduled to spend the weekend with Everett before transferring to Triple-A Tacoma next week.
Samantha Holloway, whose father made billions as the co-founder of TPG Inc., has taken over as executive chair of the Kraken hockey team, which plays in an arena her group partly owns, just steps from Seattle’s most famous landmark.
But her ambitions are larger than that. She’s attempting to snag one of the National Basketball Association’s two proposed expansion teams, which would return men’s basketball to the city that lost the SuperSonics in 2008.
It’s a delicate balance for Holloway, 43, who built her life and career as a tech founder in Colorado before joining her father as co-owner of the Kraken and moving to Seattle in 2022.
As she takes on a more visible role leading the National Hockey League team and carries on her father’s passion for sports, she’s careful not to get ahead of the NBA’s plans, while also positioning her ownership group to bring a team back to Seattle.
“It would be an amazing market, and the NBA knows that,” Holloway said in an interview in Bloomberg’s Seattle office. “This is an exercise in patience for both us and the fans because we’re all really excited for what could be.”
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, in an interview this month with NBC Sports Boston, named Seattle, Las Vegas and Mexico City as among the favorites for new franchises once the league seeks bids. The NBA expects to receive an expansion fee nearing $4 billion from the winning bidders, according to Spotrac. That money would be shared by the owners of the existing 30 NBA teams.
Holloway said it’s too early to talk about other partners in a possible NBA bid besides the current Kraken investors, who include Andy Jassy, chief executive officer of Seattle-based Amazon.com Inc.
The return of the beloved SuperSonics would come at a pivotal moment for Seattle, which stands between the social upheaval of the pandemic years and ambitious projects underway to reopen the city’s waterfront parks, reinvent downtown’s empty office buildings and host several games for the 2026 World Cup.
Until recently, Holloway’s main connection to Seattle was through her father, a pioneer in leveraged buyouts and private equity.
