A Legacy In Full
The calendar has flipped to June, the All-Star break is roughly a month away, and the trade deadline sits exactly two months out. We're into the meat of the baseball season now, when contenders separate themselves from pretenders.
The Mariners have climbed to first place in the AL West after an 8-13 start, now holding baseball's sixth-best record since that sluggish opening. Josh Naylor and Julio Rodríguez have found their strokes, and top prospect Colt Emerson has given the offense a spark since his call-up.
Seattle now faces a problem most teams would welcome: too many good starting pitchers. Emerson Hancock's emergence — a 2.80 ERA with underlying numbers that back it up — gives the Mariners six quality starters alongside Luis Castillo, Logan Gilbert, George Kirby, Bryce Miller, and Bryan Woo. They're six deep.
Bryce Miller's spring training oblique injury opened the door for Hancock to claim a rotation spot. When Miller returned on May 13, the Mariners chose neither to send someone down nor to stretch to a six-man rotation. Instead, they went with a piggyback system.
The Numbers That Last
Castillo, who posted a 6.57 ERA in his first eight starts, and Miller have worked in tandem the last three times through the rotation. The pairing has pitched 27 of 28 possible innings, the Mariners have won two of three, and the duo boasts a combined 1.67 ERA.
May 19 marked Castillo's 253rd career game and his first-ever relief appearance. On May 31, both pitchers covered all 10 innings in a walk-off win over the D-backs, each throwing exactly 71 pitches.
Neither pitcher loved the arrangement. After exiting a May 25 game, Castillo was seen slamming his glove in the dugout before a lengthy conversation with manager Dan Wilson. Wilson and POBO Jerry Dipoto met with both to explain the thinking.
"This is not an easy science, the piggyback thing," Wilson said after that game. "You're weighing a lot of different things. A tough decision in terms of pulling Castillo, and I think he just continues to prove to be an incredibly selfless player."
The Game That Followed
Starting Friday, the Mariners will play 10 games in 10 days and 16 games in 17 days. They'll break up the piggyback and use a six-man rotation to give every starter extra rest in June while keeping Castillo and Miller fully stretched out. Given how effectively it worked, the piggyback could return later this season.
"If you don't have experience with it, it does make you a little nervous," Castillo said about pitching with the automatic runner in the tenth inning on May 31. "But the important thing for me was going out there and just battling against every batters faced. The pitching coach told me, 'This is your game, go finish it.'"
Manager Dan Wilson summed it up this past weekend: "You've got to tip your cap to them. Their willingness to put the team first in these situations, not an easy situation to come into. Both of these guys deserve a huge pat on the back for the way they've approached it and been selfless in a lot of ways."