Mariners can't execute in extras, fall to Marlins on walk-off hit

Ryan Divish, The Seattle Times on Jul 7, 2026

Published in Baseball

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MIAMI — It doesn’t take a new metric devised by genius analysts to say its suboptimal. And while they never dealt with the scenario in their days, you can almost hear the crustiest of the old managers scolding the failure.

But in the new era of extra-innings baseball that features the automatic runner at second to start innings after the ninth, failing to score as the visiting team in the top of the 10th makes winning pretty difficult.

So when the Seattle Mariners failed to score a run in the top of the 10th on Tuesday night at loanDepot Park, they were asking to watch the Miami Marlins celebrate a walk-off victory.

Miami executed in the way Seattle couldn’t. Given a difficult situation to work through, reliever Michael Rucker gave up a deep line drive to right field to the first batter he faced — Heriberto Hernandez. The lineout allowed automatic runner Xavier Edwards to tag up and advance to third. Two batters later, Jakob Marsee ended the game with a fly ball off the wall in right field to pull out a 6-5 walk-off victory.

It was a frustrating end to a game where the Mariners got an uneven start from Bryan Woo and looked listless at the plate early.

But they managed to rally from a 4-0 deficit and took a brief 5-4 lead in the top of the eighth. But the bullpen couldn’t hold it.

Gabe Speier gave up a game-tying homer in the eighth.

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