Mariners suffer deflating walk-off loss to Guardians

Ryan Divish, The Seattle Times on Aug 29, 2025

Published in Baseball

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CLEVELAND — This was not how the Mariners intended to start a nine-game road trip.

The stink and disgust of the previous road trip hadn’t been quite removed from their memory even with a 4-2 homestand.

The leery feeling of “what if it happens again?” still permeated the unusually crisp air of Progressive Field on Friday night.

And while it’s only one game into this trip, well, it was disastrous.

The Mariners grabbed a four-run lead in the top of the first, but failed to add on insurance runs in the eight innings that followed. Meanwhile George Kirby gave Seattle a workable start and the Mariners' two best relievers let a two-run lead slip away.

Matt Brash gave up a run in the eighth and Andrés Muñoz gave up two runs in the ninth in a 5-4 walk-off loss to the Guardians.

Muñoz gave up a leadoff double to Nolan Jones. Brayan Rocchio looped a two-out single to left that allowed Jones to race home. Rocchio alertly advanced to second on the throw home and then was able to race to third when the ball got past Cal Raleigh and Muñoz, who was late to back-up. Steven Kwan’s fly ball to center was deep enough to allow Rocchio to race home well ahead of Julio Rodríguez’s throw.

Seattle has now lost its last six road games.

Kirby tossed seven innings, allowing two runs on six hits with no walks and six strikeouts. The two runs allowed came on a pair of solo homers after Kirby was given the 4-0 lead. Former Washington State standout Kyle Manzardo smashed a solo homer in sixth inning for Cleveland’s first run. In the seventh, Kirby challenged Jones with a 3-1 fastball and it was turned into solo homer just over the wall in center.

Since his MLB debut in 2022, Kirby has made 35 starts where he worked six-plus innings without walking a batter in an outing — the most of any pitcher in MLB.

Facing Logan Allen, yet another left-handed starter, and without Victor Robles, who began serving a seven-game suspension, the Mariners couldn’t have gotten off to a much better start in the game.

Randy Arozarena led off with a double and Raleigh worked a walk. Rodríguez drove in the first run of the game with a single up the middle. Eugenio Suárez followed with a looping single to center that scored Raleigh to make it 2-0.

It looked like Allen might limit the damage when Josh Naylor hit into a double play, but Jorge Polanco was able to muscle a 2-2 change-up just over the tall wall in the left-field corner for a two-run homer and a 4-0 lead.

The Mariners wouldn’t score again the rest of the way.