NEW YORK (news agencies) — Seattle Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh thinks All-Star closer Andrés Muñoz was tipping pitches when he squandered a two-run lead in the ninth inning Thursday night against the New York Yankees.
Muñoz was handed his sixth blown save in 27 opportunities this season after starter Bryan Woo held the Yankees hitless into the eighth.
With the Mariners holding a 5-3 lead, Muñoz entered in the ninth. He allowed a leadoff single to Trent Grisham and a one-out single to Cody Bellinger before Ben Rice came back from an 0-2 count to draw a walk that loaded the bases with two outs.
Standing at second base while Austin Wells batted, Bellinger waved his arms when Muñoz threw his slider. Wells took a changeup perhaps just below the strike zone for ball three, and on the next pitch he lined a full-count fastball into right field for a two-run single that tied it.
“He was tipping every time (with a runner) on second base,” Raleigh said of Muñoz. “Obviously, they weren’t making it very discreet, but it is part of the game. We have to know about that better going into series, and that made it really hard there at the end.
“You try to do the most you can without trying to distract him from what is happening at the plate. So that’s something that’ll we’ll have to figure out the next couple of days, for sure.”
Seattle manager Dan Wilson, however, said he didn’t think Muñoz was giving away pitch selection.
“I don’t think that’s the case,” Wilson said. “Just, I think we got ourselves into some tough counts and they took advantage of it.”
Wells was the sixth hitter in the inning and by that point Muñoz had thrown 23 pitches.
“I had five great at-bats before me to let me get up there and those guys kind of gave me a lot of confidence to trust I was going to get a pitch to hit,” Wells said.
New York capped its improbable comeback from a 5-0 deficit when Anthony Volpe scored the winning run in the 10th with an acrobatic slide on Aaron Judge’s shallow sacrifice fly.
“We couldn’t get much going against Woo, but this team has a lot of fight,” Judge said. “I’m glad Volpe’s fast.”
Helped by Giancarlo Stanton’s first career pinch-hit homer off Matt Brash in the eighth, the Yankees became the first team to win after being no-hit and trailing by five runs through seven innings since the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Montreal Expos on June 24, 1977.
“It was a lot of fun,” Wells said.
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