SEATTLE — It was a debate the Seattle Mariners held during spring training and there were proponents of both sides. Was Ariel Miranda most useful to the organization as the second left-hander in the Mariners’ bullpen, or as the No. 6 starter in the organization — pitching in the rotation in Class AAA Tacoma?
It was easy to see the benefit of both.
Miranda always believed he was a starter and Monday night he showed why, delivering one of his best outings of his career, pitching seven shutout innings in the Mariners’ 6-1 win over the Miami Marlins at Safeco Field.
The lithe lefty yielded just four hits and allowed only one runner to reach second base while striking out five and walking none to pick up his first win of the season. With a lively fastball that sat around 94 mph, Miranda pounded the inside corner to right-handers and used his split/changeup to keep them off balance. He threw 97 pitches in the outing, but needed just 66 to get through the first five innings.
The Mariners provided him plenty of run support. It started with the most important hitter in the lineup breaking out of a mini-slump.
Robinson Cano came into the game hitting just .212 (11 for 52 with a .608 on-base plus slugging percentage on the season. Over his past six games, he was hitting .174 (4 for 23) with just one extra-base hit. He was expanding the strike zone and swinging at pitches he normally takes and rolling them for easy ground balls with off-balance swings. Cano had put in early extra work over the weekend to re-find his approach and swing.
And in the first inning, facing Marlins starter Tom Koehler, Cano blistered a 1-2 changeup that Koehler left over the middle of the plate, sending a screaming line drive into the stands in deep right center. It was a prodigious homer that MLB Statcast measured at 441 feet.
Cano hadn’t even finished his elaborate celebratory handshakes with his teammates in the Mariners dugout when the familiar, yet frightening sound of Nelson Cruz making solid contact with a baseball interrupted the party.
Cruz followed with a blast of his own, a shot deep over the wall in dead-center that Statcast measured at 410 feet — thought it seemed farther.
The Mariners continued to add on. Leonys Martin led off the fourth inning with a single and later scored on Jarrod Dyson’s soft liner that landed on the left-field line and went for a double.
Cano missed his second two-run homer of the game by inches, slicing a line drive to left-center that hit about 6 inches below the top of the wall. He had to settle for an RBI that made it 5-0.
The hair and hitting phenomenon that is Taylor Motter continued to make a push for playing time when his run as starting shortstop ends in a few days.
Motter, who had singled in his previous at-bat, crushed a solo homer in the fifth inning that landed in the upper deck of left field to make it 6-0.
