SAN DIEGO — At the outset of a daunting 10-day trip, pitching in this atmosphere, against this lineup, with his scant experience, Logan Evans gave the Mariners maybe their most unexpected performance of the season.
“I thought he was relentless,” manager Dan Wilson said after Evans tossed six shutout innings to deliver the Mariners a convincing 5-1 victory over the San Diego Padres on Friday night.
In just his fourth major-league start, the 23-year-old Evans pitched six complete innings for the first time, scattering seven hits with one walk and three strikeouts.
He mixed in all six of his pitches and kept a talented Padres lineup off balance much of the night, never allowing a sold-out crowd of 41,336 at Petco Park to become a factor.
“It’s going to give me a lot of confidence and just trusting my stuff,” Evans said. “Obviously, I wasn’t punching [striking out] the world today and relied on my defense, but I think that’s who I am. I stick to my game plan and I’m going to throw the entire arsenal at you.”
J.P. Crawford blasted the first pitch of the game for a home run, and Rowdy Tellez and Cal Raleigh each added two-run homers to power the Mariners (24-19) in the first official edition of the Vedder Cup.
A rockin’ start, indeed, to this 10-day, 10-game road trip.
And it was an especially important start on the heels of the Mariners’ 1-5 homestand.
“In this clubhouse, we keep it pretty light up in here,” Crawford said. “You can’t look too far ahead. You can’t look too far in the past. It’s over with. Turn it. Flush it. And we’re on for today. And that’s the only thing that matters, is winning tonight. And we did that.”
Crawford resumed his bounce-back season with his fourth home run — the 14th leadoff homer of his career.
Tellez hit his seventh of the season in the fourth inning, a 111.7-mph blast sent on a line out to right field, 408 feet. Raleigh scored after drawing a one-out walk.
In the sixth, Raleigh hit his 14th homer of the season — two off the MLB lead — just over the wall in left field. The switch-hitting catcher now has 83 career homers hitting left-handed, and this was just the second one hit the opposite way.
All three of the Mariners homers came off Stephen Kolek, a former Seattle farmhand whom the Padres took from the M’s in the 2023 Rule 5 Draft.
Kolek, in his first two starts this season, had not allowed a run in 14 1/3 innings in victories over the Pirates and Rockies.
The Padres were 0 for 5 with runners in scoring position against Evans, who benefited from a strong defense behind him.
The Padres lineup has the lowest strikeout rate in MLB — they’re going to put the ball in play, and Evans is a pitch-to-contact pitcher.
On this night, it was advantage, Evans.
Randy Arozarena made a nice tumbling catch in left field early in the game.
A deke from rookie third baseman Ben Williamson on a play in shallow left field — on a pop-up Williamson knew he wouldn’t catch — stalled Fernando Tatis Jr. just enough running toward second base to keep the Padres star from advancing to third base with no outs.
“It got me, for sure,” Evans said. “I thought he was going to catch it.”
Williamson’s deke effectively saved a run when the next batter, Manny Machado, grounded into a nifty 6-3 double play turned by Crawford up the middle.
Evans then struck out Jackson Merrill swinging through a sweeper at his feet to end the inning and strand Tatis at third base.
Crawford, playing alongside Williamson for a month now, continues to rave about the rookie.
“You can’t teach his baseball IQ,” Crawford said. “He’s such a gamer out there. The way he thinks about the game is always one step ahead. Like, I’ve never seen that before. For him bust that out, it kind of got me a little bit too.”
The Mariners are hopeful that three of their mainstay starting pitchers — George Kirby, Bryce Miller and Logan Gilbert — can all return from the injured list in the next few weeks. Kirby could be activated by the end of this trip, and Evans’ long-term standing in the rotation is uncertain.
For now, he’s doing exactly what the Mariners need.
“I don’t know exactly what my role is going to be all year,” Evans said. “But for right now, it’s just give the team a chance to win. I feel like I’m doing that. And obviously tonight I felt like I executed that.”
