The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly from the Mariners 8-3 win over the Padres

It's not often that a team needs to leave their home stadium to get back on track, but that could be exactly what the Mariners needed. They are down in San Diego for a two-game series, and started off hot scoring in three straight innings en route to a 8-3 win. They ended up scoring in six different innings, which seems to have equaled how many innings they've scored in over the last 2 weeks (SARCASM).

Instead of a recap, let's take a look at the good, the bad, and the ugly from the opening game of the series.

Mariners vs Padres: The Good: Stars shining and a new bullpen piece

It was the stars that shined for the Mariners in the series opener, paving the way to an 8-3 win. Julio had one of his better games of the season with just his 4th occurrence of a game with two-extra base hits. He went 4-4 with a double and a homer, but was outshined by Cal Raleigh.

It was a Double Dumper Blast night, as he went hard from both sides of the plate and now has 17 homers on the season. They set the stage for Logan Gilbert to dominate, as he was essentially untouchable through 7 innings of work on just 72 pitches. It looked like he was going to go more, but struggled to get out of the 8th (we will get there in a minute).

Personally, I think none of this was the biggest news of the night. For the first time, we saw Gregory Santos in a Mariners uniform, and he looked great. He threw the six hardest pitches of the night, breaking 100 with five of them and topping out at 100.7 MPH. To have him healthy and in the pen is HUGE for the Mariners.

Mariners vs Padres: The Bad: Gilbert's 8th inning

Goodness was Gilbert dominating last night. 72 pitches through 7 innings. He was showing everything and looked like he was going to toss a complete game, and even sat down the first two batters in the 8th without issue. A 1-2 single and a 1-1 homer, and all of a sudden Gilbert was out of the game. Still, he showed everyone why he was the Mariners representative for the All-Star game, and truly looks like one of the best pitchers in baseball.

Mariners vs Padres: The Ugly: Top of the lineup and strikeouts

For all that went well in the Mariners opening win, you might want to avert your eyes from the top three bats in the lineup last night. They went 0-12 with a walk and a run, striking out seven times. That walk came to leadoff the game too, which makes it seem worse. It's a good thing that Cal and Julio had as many hits as those three had strikeouts. Having three spots spread out like this can be manageable, but to see it at the top of the lineup is ugly.

The Mariners have a funky 3:40 PM start time this afternoon to wrap up the short series, so let's hope we see another offensive explosion and get a littler 2-game sweep against the Padres. Go Mariners!