Dominic Canzone waited out a prolonged pause, then launched the first grand slam of his career to send the Seattle Mariners rolling past the Astros on Tuesday night. The blast came after a fourth-inning delay that left the bases loaded and gave the Mariners a 6-2 lead.
Canzone had to wait over a minute-and-a-half before he was finally allowed to step in. J.P. Crawford had just drawn a four-pitch walk to force in the pressure point of the inning, and Astros pitching coach Josh Miller went to the mound to visit Tatsuya Imai. After that visit, Imai and home plate umpire Jim Wolf had a back-and-forth before Canzone turned on a hanging 87 mph slider and drove it over the right-field seats. The ball came off his bat at 105.5 mph.
The inning had already tilted Seattle’s way because Randy Arozarena had been the lone source of damage against Imai before Canzone’s swing. Arozarena, who finished 4-for-4 and fell a triple shy of the cycle, drove a two-run homer into the Crawford Boxes and later reached base on a hit by pitch after a successful ABS challenge of a called strikeout in the fourth. He also scored three times.
That offensive burst backed Bryan Woo, who worked six innings, gave up two runs and struck out nine on a career-high 104 pitches. Woo generated 14 whiffs and kept the Mariners in front long enough for the game to move to the bullpen, where Alex Hoppe covered the seventh and eighth with two scoreless innings and set down all six hitters he faced in order.
Cal Raleigh also snapped out of a deep slump, ending an 0-for-38 stretch with a single to right-center in the seventh. He finished 2-for-4, was aboard on a walk in the second, and scored three times after Arozarena drove him in on the homer. Domingo González then made his major league debut in the ninth.
For Imai, the night carried a painful echo of April 10, when he started against the Mariners at T-Mobile Park and lasted only one batter while walking four before leaving after three runs in 37 pitches. He spent the next month on the injured list with arm fatigue before being activated for Tuesday’s start, but Seattle again forced him into trouble and made him pay for it. The delay between Crawford’s walk and Canzone’s swing underscored the friction of the inning, as Wolf and Imai worked through the question of whether he could keep pitching from the stretch with the bases loaded.
Seattle also had to navigate the game without several key bullpen arms, including Gabe Speier, Matt Brash and José Ferrer, but Woo’s start and Hoppe’s two clean innings kept the burden manageable. Woo said after the game that it “wasn’t six-shutty, but it’ll do,” and for the Mariners, it did more than enough.
