As you might have heard, the 2026 Seattle Mariners have struggled against left-handed pitching. Dominic Canzone, meanwhile, has been having a tremendous year at the plate. These things are related.
For most of the season, the Mariners have opted to platoon Canzone, preferring to use right-handed hitters such as Rob Refsnyder, Víctor Robles, and Mitch Garver in his place when the Mariners face a southpaw. This wasn’t an indefensible idea, with Canzone coming into the season with both a wOBA and xwOBA 50 points lower against lefties than righties.
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But the team’s struggles against lefties have been so immense, their depth so depleted, and Canzone so hot, that he’s started playing everyday lately. The results have been mixed.
Tonight, it looked like a bad choice. In the first inning, Canzone struck out on three straight sliders from MacKenzie Gore. In the third, he ran to first so slowly (correctly, still being cautious with a hamstring) that he got doubled up on a 68-mph ground ball. When he got to face Gore for the third time, he barely got a piece of a hanging slider, then swung at a sinker a few inches above the zone and was quickly down 0-2.
That was an important moment in the game. Bryce Miller fell behind early when he threw a splitter that didn’t split to the Rangers second batter, Wyatt Langford, that was sent to the left field seats. The Mariners got that run back in a very small-ball second inning that featured good at bats from Josh Naylor, Cole Young, Weston Wilson(?), and Colt Emerson(!). But Miller just kept on struggling.
Miller never really let things get out of hand, and he was even sitting 96 for the first half of his outing. He ended up finishing his 5.1 innings with zero strikeouts, which is a first for his career, but he only walked one. And while he gave up a ton of air contact, though it came with just a single barrel. Even the two-run home run he gave up to Jake Burger wasn’t exactly a bad pitch, a 96-mph fastball above the zone. Burger just muscled it and it somehow kept carrying. It was certainly a night of bad results for Miller, but in a way that struck me as kind of fluky. His velo is down from his outstanding start to the season, when he was sitting 98, but he’s still been basically fine lately.
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Nevertheless, that Burger tater brought the score to 3-1 entering the fifth inning. Emerson and Arozarena started the inning off with a pair of lead-off singles. A Julio fly out left two on and one out for Canzone, where he fell into that 0-2 hole.
But from there, Canzone fouled off a tough slider low and away. He laid off an uncompetitive four-seamer, and then went back to work, fouling off a tough sinker just above the zone. Buying those extra pitches was almost for naught, as a slider tumbled toward him breaking, breaking, breaking out of the zone. But Canzone extended his arms and flicked it. All that extra muscle he’s put on over the past couple years allowed him to take a pitch he barely got a piece of all the way to the wall in left-center field.
That double tied the game at 3-3, and it felt like the Mariners were in the driver’s seat. I will not buy into Dominic Canzone no matter how good he looks. At this point, I can’t abandon that position without everyone blaming me if he starts struggling. But Dommy Dearest still gets tonight’s Sun Hat Award for that very fine piece of hitting off a lefty.
However, with a four-game series and a seven-man bullpen, Dan Wilson opted to let a struggling Miller try to pitch the sixth inning. But he got just one out before giving up a single and a walk. Wilson went to Eduard Bazardo, who basically did his job, getting a pair of weakly hit balls. Unfortunately, both those balls found grass. That and a well-executed bunt got the score to 5-3 before Bazardo got out of the inning.
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Colt Emerson got one of those runs back in the ninth, thanks to a well-struck double off a lethal lefty, Jacob Latz. He was moved to third on a ground out and scored on a wild pitch. It was one of two hits plus a walk, all off lefties for Emerson tonight. Cole Young also had a three-hit night. But with the team 51-53, these things just don’t cleanse the palate of a loss the way they would in April.
