The Mariners got back to.500 on Friday night, and J.P. Crawford drove the result from start to finish. He hit two home runs, saved the go-ahead run and then scored the winner in the 10th inning as Seattle beat the Diamondbacks 7-6.
That was the kind of game that can reset a clubhouse and a standings page at the same time. Crawford entered the day with a.179 ISO and a 0.81 K/BB that ranked in the top 20 in baseball, and he turned in the sort of all-around performance that can carry a team through a night when the bullpen does not hold.
Seattle needed every bit of it. The Mariners built a 5-0 lead, then watched George Kirby work with a 5-1 cushion after five innings before the game tightened fast in the sixth. Corbin Carroll opened the inning with a one-out single, Geraldo Perdomo followed with a weak double to left, and Arizona kept coming during its third trip through the lineup, the stretch that has given Seattle pitchers trouble all season.
The sixth-inning collapse left the game hanging after Andrés Muñoz had another blown save, and the margin Crawford helped create early was gone. Kirby had already given up a leadoff homer in the fourth, and the Diamondbacks were suddenly within reach in a game that had looked decided when Julio Rodríguez launched his 11th homer of 2026 and ninth of May in the third inning to make it 5-0. Crawford had started the scoring too, leading off the game with a home run in the first before adding another in the fifth.
Even so, Seattle kept finding answers. The Mariners finished with 13 hits, and six of them went for extra bases. Rodríguez’s blast traveled 417 feet at 104.8 mph with a 27-degree launch angle, while Crawford’s second homer came off the kind of swing that has helped push him to a 121 wRC+ after the game and Rodríguez to a 126 wRC+ on the year.
The finish belonged to Crawford and Randy Arozarena. In the 10th, Arozarena ripped a double into the right-center gap to score Crawford and end it, a clean ending to a messy game. Seattle did not just survive the blown lead. It turned a night that could have deepened the frustration into a win that leaves the Mariners standings line back at.500 and asks only whether the pitching can keep a lead the next time it gets one.
