Grading the Seattle Mariners' gritty, gutsy 2-1 series win vs. Cincinnati Reds

The Seattle Mariners' 11-7 win over the Cincinnati Reds on Thursday made it two out of three for the series, and they did it in a totally normal, not-at-all interesting way.

Just kidding. The truth is that Thursday's game was a bonkers affair that forced the Mariners to show what they're made of, and how they answered is nothing short of commendable.

After splitting the first two at Great American Ball Park, the Mariners and Reds went back and forth throughout the rubber game on Thursday. Seattle's win probability got as low as six percent after former Mariner Jake Fraley's go-ahead grand slam in the eighth inning, but it was mostly Cal Raleigh and Randy Arozarena to the rescue as the M's ultimately walked away with the W in the 10th inning.

Wins in three straight series have the Mariners at 10-9, putting them over .500 for the first time since they were 1-0 on Opening Day. It's a record that accomplishes two contrasting things, papering over their very real faults while also serving as evidence of their determination to win games anyway.

Without further ado, let's slip on some surgical gloves and break down how the Mariners did in all phases of the game during their visit to Cincinnati.

Mariners vs. Reds Series Results

• Tuesday, April 15: SEA 4, CIN 8
• Wednesday, April 16: SEA 5, CIN 3
• Thursday, April 17: SEA 11, CIN 7

Grading the Mariners Offense: B

The Mariners scored 20 runs in this series, falling just short of seven per game. And yet, some issues that have been dogging the Mariners continue to do so.

Namely, hitting with runners in scoring position. The M's went 7-for-36 in those spots throughout the series, making for a .194 average. If that sounds good, it's only because they came into the series with an unfathomably low .148 average in RISP spots.

Further, it was not a good series for Julio Rodríguez. We remain confident that the 2022 AL Rookie of the Year is going to bust out, but he was just 1-for-13 with a measly single against Cincinnati.

Yet lest we stray into navel-gazing with the negative stuff, the hot streak Raleigh is on is certainly a cause worth celebrating. His second homer on Wednesday was the 100th of his career, and the one he hit in the ninth on Thursday briefly tied him for the major league lead with eight.

Otherwise, this is already the third game of the season that Arozarena has left fingerprints all over a W with his clutch hitting. For their parts, Dylan Moore had multiple hits in all three games and Luke Raley (home run on Thursday) and J.P. Crawford (back-to-back two-hit games) showed signs of life.

Grading the Mariners Defense: A

This grade would look different if it was the Reds under the microscope. Defensive miscues by them felt like a constant throughout the series, and particularly for Elly De La Cruz at shortstop.

The Mariners, on the other hand, made a lone error in the first game on Tuesday on a throw from Arozarena to Raleigh. A better sequence would not have ended the inning, however, and the next batter up (Austin Hays) went yard for a three-run homer anyway.

Besides, the Mariners more than made up for that on Wednesday and Thursday. Crawford and the newly promoted Ben Williamson did solid work on the left side of the infield, and Raleigh, Raley, and even Bryce Miller authored highlights with their arms in the second game.

The Mariners were frankly overdue to clean things up in the field. Defense simply must be a strength of theirs this season, and yet they rank third from the bottom of MLB with -16 Defensive Runs Saved.

Grading the Mariners Pitching: D

The Mariners may have won the series, but let's not let them off the hook for allowing the Reds to put 18 runs on the board.

This is not on Miller or Emerson Hancock. Miller returned to form on Wednesday, ramping his average fastball up to 95.4 mph (so long, arm soreness!) and pitching five scoreless innings. Hancock atoned for a dreadful debut on March 31 with five innings of two-run ball on Thursday.

Luis Castillo fared less well on Tuesday, allowing six runs over 4.1 innings. True, the homer he served up to Hays was wind-aided and only would have been out at Great American Ball Park. We can nonetheless be real that "La Piedra" just hasn't had it this year, with basically all of his performance metrics under some amount of water.

As for the bullpen, well, suffice it to say that Mariners fans have well-founded trust issues with anyone not named Andrés Muñoz.

The pen was charged with 10 of the runs the Mariners gave up in this series, with Gregory Santos, Troy Taylor and Eduard Bazardo all struggling in key situations. At least two of them were meant to anchor the pen in 2025, and one has already been banished to the minors.

Grading the Mariners Strategy: D

As nice as it was that the offense won this series for the Mariners, the team simply doesn't have enough firepower in the lineup to count on that being the case consistently.

Which, of course, is why it's so frustrating that manager Dan Wilson has established an early pattern of costly mistakes.

Notably, he stuck with Castillo too long on Tuesday. He was closing in on 100 pitches in the fifth inning, and it was clear that he wasn't fooling anyone. Wilson's decision amounted to trusting his horse, and the team got kicked in the face as a result.

“It’s a tough one there,” Wilson said, per Adam Jude of The Seattle Times. "I think ‘The Rock’ comes through in a lot of those situations — we’ve seen it time and time again. And I think he was still at about 85 pitches, 87 pitches, something like that. So there was still some left in the tank...[but] they were able to convert there and take the lead.”

Then on Thursday, Wilson made a series of questionable bullpen moves. He was too quick to call on Gabe Speier and too trusting of Bazardo, who served up Fraley's slam after allowing three straight to reach. If not for a five-out save, Muñoz should have been standing by to get the M's out of the inning.

In Wilson's defense, Speier is his only left-hander and it would be hard for any manager to mine gold from a bullpen that ranks at the bottom of the American League with a 18.5 strikeout percentage. He also had some calls that paid off, including batting Moore leadoff on Tuesday and getting contributions from Williamson and Donovan Solano off the bench on Thursday.

Yet even if things could be better for the Mariners, now is not the time to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. A gutsy series victory is a good way to start a nine-game road trip, and now they have momentum as the move on for three in Toronto and three more in Boston.