Mariners don’t do easy: George Kirby rocked, Blue Jays roll 13-4 in ALCS Game 3
You thought this was going to be easy?
The Mariners don’t do easy.
It was all so tantalizing. Right away in Game 3 of the American League Championship Series Wednesday night, Julio Rodriguez jolted Toronto starter Shane Bieber, and rocked the house. Rodriguez blasted a two-run home run into the back of Seattle’s bullpen. The 46,471 packed into T-Mobile Park were rockin’.
It was all so perfect. Ichiro Suzuki, Randy Johnson, Edgar Martinez, Jay Buhner were all in the park. Just before first pitch, Buhner had taken the stadium’s public-address microphone, plus the team’s celebration, gold trident they hoist after home runs. From behind home plate the former Mariners All-Star and Gold Glove right fielder bellowed into it a PG-13 version of catcher Cal Raleigh’s instantly famous proclamation before this postseason.
“Let’s go win the whole F-in’ thing!” Buhner yelled.
The Mariners were up 2-0 right away in Game 3 of the ALCS they’d never before this led two games to none. Dreams of Mariners three-games-to-none series lead in this best of seven, dreams of being one win away from Seattle’s first World Series, weren’t just fantasies.
It was on.
The Blue Jays bludgeoning George Kirby changed all that. In a hurry.
Kirby, Seattle’s most regularly rested starter throughout this postseason, allowed home runs to nine hitter Andres Gimenez, George Springer and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in consecutive innings. He allowed eight runs from the third inning through one batter into the fifth.
That 2-0 lead, and those Seattle dreams, died — for now — amid 12 unanswered runs by the Blue Jays.
Toronto’s lethal offense that blew the New York Yankees out of the division series blew out the Mariners 13-4 Wednesday night.
Seattle still has not won a home game in a league championship series in exactly 25 years, since Oct. 15, 2000.
So now Seattle’s task has changed. It’s win the next two at home, Game 4 Thursday with extra-rested Luis Castillo starting then Game 5 Friday, to avoid returning to Toronto and ending this series right here.
Just not right now. “One loss doesn’t discourage us,” Kirby said.
Indeed, after this one got way away, Tupac was still delivering rhymes on the Mariners’ clubhouse stereo. The affable Rodriguez was joking with visitors.
“Just one game,” he said. “They are here for a reason, too. They are a very good team, and they came out swinging today.
“Just flush it off. ...Move on.”
The All-Star center fielder and co-franchise cornerstone with Cal Raleigh was asked what his message is to Mariners fans who have been hardened by so many almosts and not-to-bes over 48 years.
“The message to the fans? Keep bringing the energy,” Rodriguez said. “I know they are going to keep bringing it. Obviously we were down by a lot early, but they stayed through the last inning.
“I always give them so much props, because they are so special. They are so special. They love the team...That’s special.
“Thank you for that. I know they are going to bring it (Thursday).”
Rodriguez’s home run was his second in as many games as the third batter of the game.
But then Bieber looked like the ace Cleveland traded to Toronto this summer. He expertly commanded the outside edge of the plate with his array of cut-fastballs, sliders, curves and change-ups. He retired 16 of 18 Mariners the first inning, and cruised through six innings. He allowed only three other hits after Rodriguez’s third home run of this postseason. He struck out eight.
“It was a bad mistake to Julio. I’m happy with the pitch selection, just was supposed to be down and away, ended up leaking all the way across the plate,” Bieber said. “He put a great swing on it. Obviously, he’s a great hitter. So less than ideal start to the outing.
“Even pitching my way through a double (by Jorge Polanco) after that, I just felt like I had good stuff tonight.”
The Mariners’ other runs came in the bottom of the eighth, long after this game was lost, on back-to-back home runs by Randy Arozarena and Raleigh off Toronto reliever Yariel Rodriguez.
Kirby allowed eight runs on eight hits in four-plus innings. So much for that career ERA of 1.50 in four postseason appearances entering Wednesday.
At the end of the third of his four-inning shelling, Kirby stomped down the dugout steps to the clubhouse tunnel. He took off his glove and slammed it into the facing of the cement, dugout roof.
“I just wasn’t executing when they got guys on base. And they are really aggressive when that happens,” Kirby said.
“I wasn’t really making a lot of good pitches there in the third and fourth.”
Blue Jays break out on Kirby
The last nine postseason games at T-Mobile Park dating to 2001 had six or fewer combined runs, the longest such streak of any venue.
That ended quickly Wednesday. The Blue Jays and Mariners combined for seven runs by the third inning.
Rodriguez jolted Bieber and the park by ripping a 93-mph, four-seam fastball. It was 2-0 Mariners.
Kirby, the only Mariners starting pitcher on regular rest and between-games schedule throughout this postseason, got rocked quickly and decisively. The Blue Jays scored five runs in the third inning and a sixth in the top of the fourth.
That turned the Mariners’ early, 2-0 lead and visions of what could be into a 6-2 deficit and reality of what was. “Really cute,” particularly with his slider, is how Kirby described his flawed approach in Game 3.
Too cute quickly became ugly for Kirby and the Mariners.
Toronto had five hits to get its five runs in the top of the third. All five hits were on pitches Kirby left up, thigh-high or higher, in the strike zone. One of the few Kirby got down was way too low, into the dirt and skipping off the inside of catcher Cal Raleigh’s wrist with the bases loaded for a wild pitch. That scored Toronto’s go-ahead run for a 3-2 lead.
The Blue Jays’ blow-back inning began with Kirby allowing a double by eight hitter Ernie Clement. Then Toronto’s number-nine batter Andres Gimenez lauched Kirby’s second pitch to him over the wall beyond right field. It was Gimenez’s first home run since Aug. 27. It hushed the raucous crowd and tied the game at 2. Kirby said he was trying to elevate that fastball to Gimenez, but left it too low.
Two pitches after Kirby’s run-scoring wild pitch, Daulton Varsho lined a double that scored Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Alejandro Kirk.
And the rout was on.
Mariners’ changed approach midgame
With his offense doing nothing against the dominant Bieber, Mariners manager Dan Wilson and pitching coach Pete Woodworth made the decision early, while Kirby was getting rocked: We are not going to expend the bullpen in this one.
Jumbled by the 15-inning final game to win the division series over Detroit Friday, the M’s had just gotten the pitching staff back in order while winning the first two games of this ALCS in Toronto.
So Wilson kept Kirby out there for the eight runs over 74 pitches. In the third inning, the Mariners sent ace Bryan Woo to the bullpen. He’s the assumed starter in Game 5 Friday, based off his comments he’s ready after positive bullpen sessions. Pectoral inflammation has kept Woo from pitching since Sept. 24. Wilson explained his idea of having Woo go into the bullpen in third inning of Game 3.
“A good chance for him tonight to just get out there and get acclimated, in case that’s a place where he comes out of later in the series,” the manager said. “So a chance to just get comfortable out there and see what it’s like.”
Then Wilson brought in pitchers from the bottom of Seattle’s playoff roster: Carlos Vargas, Caleb Ferguson and Luke Jackson. Only Vargas had pitched in this series, and he did only when Game 2 become a blowout for the Mariners in Toronto Monday.
Vargas and Ferguson allowed five more runs combined after Kirby left Game 3 Wednesday. Three of those runs came on Kirk’s massive home run off Ferguson in the sixth inning. Kirk struck that 94-mph, four-seam fastball on the outside corner so hard the opposite way well beyond right field you could hear it in Tacoma.
And the Mariners turned their attention to winning Game 4 Wednesday.
They haven’t lost two in a row this postseason. They haven’t lost two straight while playing for something since Sept. 3 and 5, at Tampa Bay and at Atlanta. That doesn’t count the three straight they lost to the Dodgers to close the regular season, when they already had their first AL West title and the second playoff seed clinched.
“This is a team that’s done that a lot this year in terms of bouncing back, being resilient,” Wilson said. “We’ve used a lot of words for it, but (Wednesday is) going to be that opportunity again for us. And these guys know how to prepare and be ready for that, and I don’t expect it’s going to be an issue for them at all.
“This is a team that has proven over and over again that fighting back, bouncing back, having resiliency is a part of their DNA.”
This story was originally published October 15, 2025 at 8:00 PM with the headline "Mariners don’t do easy: George Kirby rocked, Blue Jays roll 13-4 in ALCS Game 3."
