Dominic Canzone waited more than a minute and a half before stepping into the box in the fourth inning Tuesday, then turned Tatsuya Imai’s hanging 87 mph slider into the biggest swing of the night. With the bases loaded and nobody out after J.P. Crawford drew a four-pitch walk, Canzone sent a grand slam into the right-field seats and gave the Mariners a 6-2 lead on the way to a 10-2 win.
It was the first grand slam of Canzone’s career, and it arrived at a moment when Seattle needed a jolt. Randy Arozarena had already sparked the inning by reaching on a successful ABS challenge and then getting hit by a pitch, before later adding a two-run homer into the Crawford Boxes. Arozarena finished 4-for-4 and came up a triple shy of the cycle, part of an attack that kept pressure on Houston from the middle innings on.
Bryan Woo gave the Mariners the kind of start that made the offense matter less, and also more. He worked six innings, allowed two runs and struck out nine on a career-high 104 pitches, with 14 whiffs and enough command to keep the game from slipping when Houston briefly threatened. The second run came in the third inning after back-to-back walks to Jose Altuve and Yordan Alvarez, the kind of mistake Woo did not make often. He summed it up afterward as, in effect, not a shutout effort but a useful one.
Seattle then turned the game over to Alex Hoppe, and he erased any remaining doubt by working two scoreless innings in the seventh and eighth. Hoppe retired all six hitters he faced in order, preserving a margin that kept growing as the night went on. Cal Raleigh, meanwhile, snapped out of an 0-for-38 slump with a single to right-center in the seventh inning and finished 2-for-4 with three runs scored after also drawing a walk in the second inning.
The result mattered because of both the way it unfolded and the names around it. Imai was making another start against Seattle after a rough outing at T-Mobile Park on April 10, when he retired only one batter, walked four and was lifted after allowing three runs over 37 pitches. He spent the next month on the injured list with arm fatigue, and Tuesday’s matchup became another reminder that the Mariners have handled him well. Seattle also got through the game while missing several key bullpen arms, including Gabe Speier, Matt Brash and José Ferrer, which made Woo’s six innings and Hoppe’s clean relief work even more valuable.
The night ended with Domingo González making his major league debut in the ninth inning, a final footnote to a game that had already been decided by then. For Seattle, the bigger picture is simple: when the top of the order gets on, Canzone and Arozarena can change a game fast, and the Mariners score enough to make even a thin bullpen look deep.
