SAN DIEGO -- J.P. Crawford spent Thursday’s off-day living out a childhood dream, one that in no way involved baseball.
The Mariners’ shortstop flew to Southern California ahead of the team charter to spend the afternoon at SeaWorld San Diego, the aquarium that his grandparents voyaged him to countless times from his family home up Interstate 5 in Long Beach, Calif.
Even with lofty ambitions to play in the big leagues back then, SeaWorld was actually at the tippy top of his career bucket list in his adolescent era. He even wrote in his yearbook that he wanted to work there when he grew up.
This experience made Thursday’s visit that much more special, as Crawford for the first time brought his 5-month-old daughter Korra to the place that stirred so much nostalgia.
And the feel-good vibes seemed to carry over for Seattle’s leadoff man in a big way on Friday.
Crawford, who missed Wednesday’s game with shoulder soreness, pummeled the very first pitch of Friday's contest for a 357-foot solo home run that immediately seized momentum in front of a packed house at Petco Park, gave rookie Logan Evans run support right away and sparked the Mariners towards a commanding 5-1 victory over the Padres.
"When you're on the road, things can turn quickly when a crowd gets into it,” Mariners manager Dan Wilson said. “And this was a game where we didn't allow the crowd to get into it.”
Crawford also singlehandedly turned a critical double play in the third inning that created more breathing room for Evans, who impressively worked through one jam after another over six brilliant scoreless innings in what was easily the best start of his promising young career.
Evans surrendered seven hits and one walk, but not until his 23rd batter of the night with one out in the sixth. Yet despite not much swing-and-miss -- he only had three strikeouts and didn’t generate a whiff until the second time through the lineup -- Evans held the Padres’ potent lineup to 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position.
“I don't know exactly what my role is going to be all year,” Evans said. “But for right now, it's just to give the team a chance to win. I feel like I'm doing that. And obviously tonight, I felt like I executed that.”
The defense behind Evans played a huge part in his poise, too.
Aside from Crawford’s double play, it was actually a base hit in the previous at-bat that was just as significant. On that shallow single into left field from Luis Arraez, Mariners third baseman Ben Williamson deke’d Fernando Tatis Jr. by pretending to camp under it, even though the rookie knew that it was way out of reach.
Doing so forced Tatis to halt between first and second base and precluded him from reaching third.
Had Tatis done so, which seemed likely, he would’ve then scored on Crawford’s double play, tied the game and injected the ticketed 41,336 back into it.
"You can't teach his baseball IQ,” said Crawford, the 2020 Gold Glove Award winner. “He's such a gamer out there. The way he thinks about the game is always one step ahead. Like, I’ve never seen that before. For him to bust that out, it kind of got me a little bit too.”
In the process, and thanks to a scoring change on Thursday from a runaway loss on May 4 in Arlington, Evans lowered his ERA to 2.57 through four starts, his latest outing coming at a time when the Mariners have their three most productive starting pitchers from last season on the injured list.
Even with the dearth of that depth right now, outings like Evans’ underscored how successful Seattle can be when receiving length -- and how badly the club needs it -- as the Mariners advanced to 14-3 when their starter pitches at least six innings.
"He went out there tonight and just stayed very, very calm,” Wilson said. “I thought this is obviously a confidence booster for him."
The Mariners also improved to 22-11 when hitting at least one homer, as Rowdy Tellez also went deep with a two-run shot in the fourth and Cal Raleigh hit a two-run poke in the sixth, a rare opposite-field blast from the left side for the switch-hitting backstop. His 14 this season are two shy of the MLB lead held by Shohei Ohtani, who also homered on Friday.
But it was Crawford who sparked it all, again exercising his newfound dad strength.