Luke Raley's pinch-hit home run lifts Mariners past Giants

Tim Booth, The Seattle Times on Jul 19, 2026

Published in Baseball

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SEATTLE — Luke Raley started so hot — relatively speaking — with his power production at the plate that there was bound to be a course correction.

But maybe not to the extreme of the past six weeks.

Between the beginning of June and when Raley arrived at T-Mobile Park on Sunday morning, the lefty had enjoyed the feeling of rounding the bases after hitting a home run only one time. After homering 13 times before the end of May, the absence of the long ball for Raley was one part of the Seattle Mariners’ overall power outage the past six weeks.

Perhaps, just perhaps, what happened later Sunday afternoon could be a spark for Raley after providing the decisive blow that gave the Mariners a 6-3 win over the San Francisco Giants before 36,204 fans at T-Mobile.

Raley hit the second pinch-hit home run of his career with two outs in the sixth inning off Giants reliever Adrian Houser. The oft-maligned decisions by manager Dan Wilson to pinch-hit for a better matchup between pitcher and batter worked out glowingly in this case as Raley clubbed an elevated changeup 386 feet into the right-field seats.

Raley’s last homer came on June 11 at Baltimore. The 99 plate appearances Raley had between June 1 and through Saturday produced a .141 batting average, a .217 slugging percentage and a .401 OPS. Not great for someone expected to add some punch to the lineup.

There are plenty of Mariners that need to get going at the plate — particularly slugging the ball — if this team is going to live up to its expectations. Raley is one.

Raley’s homer was the precursor to Cole Young breaking the game open an inning later. A day after his three-run blast awakened the M’s, Young added a two-run shot off Houser for his 13th of the season.

Young was moved up to third in the batting order for Sunday’s game to give him the chance at additional at-bats. Wise move. He reached base three times and scored twice.

Josh Naylor and Weston Wilson also delivered RBI singles as the M’s took two of three in the series and returned to the .500 mark (50-50) with 62 games to go.

It also helped that Logan Gilbert was overpowering, even if it didn’t look that way early. Gilbert gave up a first-inning solo homer to Bryce Eldridge and a two-out RBI single to Heliot Ramos. But after those bumps, Gilbert was nearly untouchable.

Gilbert matched his season-high with 10 strikeouts, his final one coming in the sixth inning when he blew a 97 mph fastball past Rafael Devers on his 89th pitch. Gilbert also struck out 10 on June 16 against Baltimore. He retired 10 straight after Ramos’ base hit in the first inning and allowed only two other runners to reach base.

Gilbert also accomplished something that hadn’t been done in more than two years: he struck out Luis Arraez twice in a game. Arraez’s last two-strikeout game came July 3, 2024, but Gilbert got him swinging at a changeup in the first inning and a slider in the third. Arraez did give the Giants the lead with two-out RBI double in the fifth, but Gilbert’s teammates answered back with Young scoring on Cal Raleigh’s double play ground out in the bottom of the inning.

Eduard Bazardo and Gabe Speier bridged the seventh and eighth and Andrés Muñoz picked up his 17th save with a dominant ninth that featured nine pitches, nine strikes and two strikeouts.

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