Buster OlneyOct 11, 2025, 01:19 AM ET
- Senior writer ESPN Magazine/ESPN.com
- Analyst/reporter ESPN television
- Author of “The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty”
SEATTLE — After Jorge Polanco singled to end the Mariners’ 3-2 victory over the Tigers in 15 innings late Friday night, propelling Seattle to its first American League Championship Series since 2001, a full accounting and assessment could begin.
Four hours, 58 minutes. The two sides combined for 15 pitchers who threw 472 pitches, including two starters — Logan Gilbert and Luis Castillo — who made the first relief appearances of their careers. So many missed opportunities in extra innings, by both teams. So much emotion, fueled by a T-Mobile Park crowd of 47,025 that was relentless in its decibel generation.
“An incredible win for Seattle,” Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said, “which means it was an incredible loss for us. That was an epic game.”
Mariners pitcher George Kirby said, “From the eighth inning on, I had a massive headache. I am glad that game is over.”
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It felt like two different games, some of them said afterward. Kirby joked that he felt like the start of the game, when he was pitching against the Tigers’ Tarik Skubal, had occurred three days before the finish. The Mariners took a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the second, and when Kirby was removed by Seattle manager Dan Wilson in the sixth inning, Kerry Carpenter immediately crushed a two-run go-ahead homer — which might have felt like enough at the time, given Skubal’s dominance.
Skubal confounded Seattle with his changeup, and though the Mariners pushed his pitch count steadily, as they had hoped, he kept racking up strikeouts. Two in the first, two in the second, three in the third; in one stretch, he whiffed seven hitters in a row. Skubal’s season high before this outing was 107 pitches, and with the left-hander approaching triple digits in his pitch count, he and Hinch agreed the sixth inning would be his last. His final pitch, against MVP candidate Cal Raleigh, was 101 mph and gave him his 13th strikeout of the game on his 99th offering.
But for the Mariners, Skubal’s exit was a reprieve. They immediately tied the score on a pinch-hit single by Leo Rivas, who was celebrating his 28th birthday.
Nobody could have known that the score would remain tied for the better part of the next three hours, with Wilson and Hinch summoning relievers and each of them responding effectively, from Detroit’s Will Vest, Rafael Montero and Jack Flaherty to the Mariners’ Matt Brash, Andres Munoz, Gilbert and, yes, Castillo, working out of the bullpen for the first time in nine years.
“You can’t say enough about what those guys did out of the bullpen,” Wilson said.
Jorge Polanco’s walk-off single in the 15th capped the Mariners’ first series-clinching victory in extra innings since Game 5 of the 1995 ALDS. Steph Chambers/Getty Images
The work was often accomplished under duress. The Mariners put two runners on base in the 10th inning, two more in the 12th — the basepaths constantly filled — and twice the Tigers turned double plays to get out of jams. After Kirby left the game, he went back to the clubhouse to do his postgame work then went to the dugout to watch. So did Skubal. Players on both teams draped over the front rails of the dugout, tracking every pitch that had the potential of ending or extending their season.
Tommy Kahnle came on to pitch for Detroit in the bottom of the 15th inning, and J.P. Crawford smoked a single — yet another promising start to an inning. Kahnle then hit Randy Arozarena with a pitch, bringing Raleigh to the plate, and the catcher slammed a fly ball deep enough to center to enable Crawford to tag up and take third while Arozarena took second. Hinch ordered an intentional walk of Julio Rodriguez, and now it was Polanco’s chance to end the game.
“I was just looking for a pitch to hit,” Polanco said, describing how he narrowed his focus on Kahnle’s changeup.
When Polanco pulled the ball between first and second base, Crawford raced home.
“I couldn’t believe it was over,” said Raleigh, who, like the other Mariners, chased after Polanco in celebration.
T-Mobile Park went into full meltdown, with a din so loud that it was nearly impossible for the players standing next to each other on the field to hear each other.
Maybe it was the loudest scene in Mariners history. Or maybe the second loudest. The last time a winner-take-all AL Division Series game ended in extra innings took place 30 years earlier, when Seattle designated hitter Edgar Martinez — now the Mariners’ hitting coach — pulled a ball into the left-field corner and another future Hall of Famer, Ken Griffey Jr., raced around the bases to score the deciding run of a series against the New York Yankees.
Before this Game 5, the Mariners’ pregame ceremonies began with the unveiling of a shiny sports car coming through an alley in the right-field wall, and the guy riding on top of the back seat was familiar to this crowd: Griffey. The extra-inning madness that followed, all the pitching heroics and runners left on base and the way the Mariners chased Polanco after his game-winning hit, will be remembered in the same way as that 1995 epic.
Champagne was still dripping from the back of Polanco’s hat after the game when he spoke with reporters.
“I have so much gratitude,” he said.
Baseball fans who witnessed this 15-inning saga can relate.
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