Mariners take down the Angels with a sweep in Anaheim

The Mariners have an off day on Thursday the 18th, and it’s likely a day full of celebration for the M’s. Anytime you can head into LA and sweep the Angels, you know it’s a good day. That’s just what the Mariners were able to do against the Halos, sweeping a three-game series in Anaheim for the first time since September 2016.

If you thought that the Yankees incredible baserunning prowess would be the greatest kerfuffle you saw for the rest of the season, the Angels went ahead and tried to one-up them by forgetting how to play defense. The first was the Angels catcher launching it into center for no reason, as Haggerty had stayed at first. It was such a bad throw, he got to take second easily.

The Mariners would capitalize on mistakes by the Angels all series en route to a sweep

Hammy Swags would get to third, and then it was a line drive by Julio. Hit at 108 mph, I don’t fault the drop. However, the Angels forgot to cover home with Hags in a pickle, and he would score to put the Mariners up 3-2. Then, with one out and runners on the corners, they threw home to try and get Moore at the plate, instead of rolling what would’ve been a tailormade, and easy, double play to end the inning.

A couple of runs later, and the Mariners would finish off the game with a 6-2 win. If you thought four runs in the 9th was good, the second game held more in store for you.

After being perfecto’d for five innings on the 10-year anniversary of King Felix’s perfect game, the Mariners bats woke up in the 6th, scoring three runs to take a 3-2 lead. That would still be the score in the 9th, before the Mariners exploded for five runs, punctuated by a laser shot from Julio, his 19th of the year, to put the Mariners up by a final score of 8-2.

The finale was an afternoon game, and the Mariners bats showed up early and often here. With four innings of multi-run baseball, they had six different players drive in runs. Suarez would go deep, and Winker would hit a birthday bomb… which we called!

Winker hit a solo bomb that carried just enough to get out, damaging the Angels display board in the process. The power show, however, was put on by Cal Raleigh as it ended up being a double-dumper day in which he hit his 17th and 18th homers of the season. All of this cumulated in an 11-7 win, getting the Mariners to 65-54 on the season. It also drops the Angels to 51-67, and 24-50 over their last 77 games.

Once again, the Angels wasted a magnificent day from Shohei Ohtani. The 26 previous times a hitter had four hits, four RBI, a HR, and a 3B, their team won. That streak was broken as the Angels couldn’t do enough to help out the generational superstar.

It was a great series win for the Mariners. It’s an off day, and the M’s find themselves sitting at the top of the Wild Card picture with a 1.5-game lead over Tampa and Toronto. The Athletics are up next, as the M’s will take a trip there to play them in a three-game series before heading home. It’s a great time to be a fan, go Mariners!