Could Mariners’ huge walkoff win end up being the jolt they need?

The first eight innings of the Seattle Mariners’ game on Thursday night was a continuation of a frustrating week.

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The M’s lost on Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday, erasing a small lead for first place in the AL West that they had moved into last weekend. And as you might suspect, offense was the main issue, with Seattle mustering a combined four runs in those three losses on only 13 hits. It was just about as bad entering the ninth inning on Thursday against the Detroit Tigers, too, with Seattle trailing 3-1 with a meager three hits on the night to its credit.

But that’s where things turned around. Hits by Luke Raley and Randy Arozarena, plus a massively important walk by Jorge Polanco, loaded the bases with two outs for Mitch Haniger. He then punched a Will Vest fastball to right field, and Detroit’s Ryan Vilade whiffed on a dive for the sinking liner, allowing the Mariners to escape with a 4-3 walkoff win and avoid a three-game series sweep.

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Near the end of not just a game but a week where energy has been lacking – to the extent that catcher Cal Raleigh pointed it out after a loss Wednesday night – things appeared to take a complete 180 for the Mariners. Is this the jolt of energy they need as they continue to battle the Houston Astros for the division?

Mariners insider Shannon Drayer of Seattle Sports spoke about that when she joined Brock and Salk on Friday morning.

“To see it all turn around in one crazy inning in the ninth,” asked co-host Mike Salk, “does it alleviate some of those problems? Could this help, or is that just a one-off that happened to win them a game?”

Here’s what Drayer said in response, which includes insight she picked up from her Mariners Radio Network interview on the field with Raley right after Thursday’s game:

I talked to Luke Raley down on the field for the walkoff interview and he pointed to the energy that they had in that ninth inning, and I went back and I watched it on TV … and there’s just a great shot of when Randy Arozarena gets his hit and is at first base and does the big arms-crossed thing and the dugout is doing it back to him, going nuts. I think that is something that has been missing, but, you know, you have to generate that yourself. And when you are playing bad baseball, it sometimes looks like that energy is not there.

I think part of it was they want to feel that all the time. There are teams that you see come in and kind of have that from the get-go, that they’ve got a lot of confidence and they’re going to attack the game right away. This team has been through a lot of flux and a lot of transition over the last 10 days, and I think that might have a little something to do with it. I think that last night was a reminder of what that felt like, and, ‘OK, got to get back on track.’

I think that they were flying high after the acquisitions (ahead of the July 30 MLB trade deadline), and they had the great offense where they were scoring seven runs a game for the better part of nine games, and then they hit some speed bumps. And then perhaps get a little tired, and then perhaps all of a sudden you are facing some of the better pitchers, often not the best pitchers, in baseball (in Philadelphia’s Zack Wheeler on Sunday and Detroit’s Tarik Skubal on Wednesday).

I have this little joke that I tell myself before every pregame, and sometimes when I wake up in the morning: ‘Today is the first day of the season.’ You know, for everything that they haven’t done this year, they still wake up within a half-game of first place just about every day, which means everything’s still in front of them. So maybe today is the day where it actually feels like that, and maybe it’s that way for them, too. Luke Raley saying that ninth inning was it last night, ‘that’s what we’ve got to continue to take.’ And there is a luck factor in that, too. They had all sorts of luck in that game, and when you’re not getting the luck, when the ball is not falling, that grinds on a team, too. And so hopefully they had that breakthrough with the luck, they had that breakthrough with the feeling as well, and they’re ready to go against this Mets team and take it on the road.

The Mariners begin the final leg of a three-series homestand at 7:10 p.m. Friday night when the New York Mets come to town. Radio coverage starts at 6 p.m. with the pregame show on Seattle Sports 710 AM, the Seattle Sports app and SeattleSports.com.

Listen to the full Brock and Salk conversation with Mariners insider Shannon Drayer in the podcast at this link or in the player near the top of this post. Catch Brock and Salk live from 6-10 a.m. weekdays on Seattle Sports.

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