Making their return to Sunday Night Baseball for the first time in two decades, the Mariners showed ESPN what they’d been missing by putting on a show that was equal parts tense pitchers’ duel and offensive explosion, happily this time in favor of the home team.
In the battle of Luises, Castillo came out ahead of Severino in the end, but it was tight over the first few innings. After trading scoreless first innings, Castillo weaved out of some trouble in the top of the second, working around a walk that wasn’t his fault (HP umpire Cory Blaser missed a strike two call on a perfectly-placed four-seamer, causing the usually implacable Rock to literally become this meme) and a hit by pitch that was, stranding runners on first and second by handling the bottom of the Mets lineup, including Latin pop superstar Jose Iglesias and old friend Ben Gamel—thanks to a superior play from Jorge Polanco that had a mic’d up Victor Robles losing his mind.