PHOENIX -- If you live in Tacoma, Wash., and are disappointed about Dominic Canzone not having been available for a card signing appearance Monday night, he had a good reason for needing to skip town -- he had a flight to catch.
Canzone arrived in Phoenix on Monday, having been recalled from Triple-A Tacoma by the Mariners after outfielder Leody Taveras was designated for assignment pregame. Canzone had gone 0-for-3 at the big league level in 2025 and wasn’t even in the starting lineup. All of which is to say, he wasn’t a likely candidate to deliver the Mariners’ hardest-hit and farthest-hit ball of the season in a seesaw, topsy-turvy 8-4 extra-inning loss at Chase Field.
Top of the ninth, two outs, tying run at the plate. All at the stadium in which he debuted at the Major League level less than two years ago. Canzone worked the count full against D-backs hurler Jeff Brigham, spitting on a pair of breaking balls off the plate after falling behind in the count. When he got a 3-2 heater on the inner-third, he mauled it 450 feet, the longest home run hit by a Mariner this season.
“Just the whole at-bat, I was just trying to get something to do damage with,” Canzone said. “I just figured he kind of wanted to get back to the heater and challenge me, especially with the top of the lineup coming up.”
At 115.9 mph, it marks the hardest-hit Seattle homer since Julio Rodríguez on Sept. 11, 2022 (which, coincidentally, was also a game-tying ninth-inning homer). If you’re curious what a ball with a 1.000 xBA looks like, Canzone’s homer was it.
Prior to the game, manager Dan Wilson noted that Canzone would be “in the mix” for at-bats as part of a right field rotation moving forward.
“We know Dom can hit for power,” Wilson said. “When he gets the barrel to the ball, it goes.”
Canzone spent the past two months with Triple-A Tacoma backing up Wilson’s words. He delivered a .925 OPS across 45 games, slugging 13 homers and driving in 36 runs. That loud contact was on display as well, putting 40 balls in play with an exit velocity north of 100 mph; of the 11 hardest-hit balls for the Rainiers this season, Canzone is responsible for eight of them.
The last time that Canzone stepped across the white lines at Chase Field, he was the D-backs’ starting right fielder on July 30, 2023. Twenty-four hours later, he was a key piece in the Paul Sewald deal, arriving in Seattle alongside Josh Rojas and Ryan Bliss.
All that came flooding back to the 27-year-old pregame. He looked around the field during batting practice and remembered his rise through the D-backs’ system -- which included a pair of years in the Pacific Northwest with High-A Hillsboro (Ore.) -- before the culmination of his dream.
But before Canzone could deliver his ninth-inning fireworks Monday, things looked bleak on the Mariners’ side of the scoreboard. Through the front eight innings, each of their eight hardest-hit balls had all gone for outs. D-backs starter Merrill Kelly kept them off-balance and limited slug, as scattered singles couldn’t materialize into a sustained rally.
Down to their final out, trailing 4-0, Seattle got a reprieve when Arizona closer Justin Martinez motioned for the training staff, ultimately leading to his exit. (The D-backs’ righty is expected to undergo an MRI on Tuesday for right elbow tightness.) From there, Donovan Solano ripped an RBI single. Cole Young followed him with a run-scoring knock of his own. Then there was Canzone’s swing -- and emphatic bat flip.
“That's what our guys do,” Wilson said. “They're going to play until the end regardless, and they were given a foot in the door and they took it and they busted the door open and tied it up and just weren't able to come out on top. But that's the kind of effort we see from these guys all the time.”
“I think, first of all, we don't quit,” starting pitcher Emerson Hancock said, “we kept fighting. That [ninth] inning was unreal, and we’ve got a bunch of fighters in there and we fought to the very last out.
“It's baseball, tomorrow is a new day.”