Seattle Mariners three stars of up and down Week 10
Joe Swenson
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Star #3: Logan Gilbert
11 Innings, 12 Ks, 7 hits, and 1 win.
Other than giving up a lead-off home run to Justin Upton, which led to a nearly disastrous first inning meltdown, Logan Gilbert looked solid on Sunday. He was able to get out of that trouble and then hit cruise control. The rookie cleared 100 pitches for the first time in his professional career.
It was cool that Shohei Ohtani didn’t get his bat on Gilbert’s pitches. The M’s offense responded, supporting him with 9 runs (five of which came in the ninth) on 10 hits. Congratulations to Gilbert on his first win.
Gilbert’s ERA dropped from 9.45 to 7.59 to 5.94 to 4.99 over his last three starts. The previous two were strong enough to showcase his talent. He has a mid-to-upper 90s fastball and a nearly unhittable curve when it’s down in the zone. The outing wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. He walked four Angels but managed to escape without any of them coming around to score en route to the win.
Logan Gilbert fanned 7 over 5 innings to pick up his first @MLB win: https://t.co/zaEAKGoPzY pic.twitter.com/3AV9BI9K0q
— MLB Pipeline (@MLBPipeline) June 7, 2021
Star #2: J.P. Crawford
.370 avg, 1.073 OPS, 10 hits, 6 XBH, 6 runs scored.
The decision between J.P. Crawford and the player who was the Star of the Week was close. JP was the table-setter most of the week. After beating up on LAA pitching the last four games, he is batting .522 against the Halos in 2021. To say he’s owned them so far this year is an understatement.
Crawford also had a team season-high five5 doubles during Week 10’s action. In addition, he managed to knock in five runs while scoring six. For good measure, JP also added a steal.
Having Crawford at the top of the line-up works right now. If he can stay hot and Mitch Haniger gets things going again, then it’s going to be a strong top of the order. Throw in the fact that Kelenic can’t bat around .100 forever, and Crawford could score a lot more runs very soon. It’s not like Haniger was terrible this week. He batted .259 but didn’t have a walk and struck out eight times.