CHICAGO -- Cal Raleigh continued to make home-run history on Sunday afternoon, but he was hardly the only one who got in on the action during the Mariners’ 14-6 win over the Cubs that clinched Seattle’s first series win at historic Wrigley Field in franchise history.
The Mariners wound up hitting a season-high five homers and 18 hits while tying a season high in runs scored.
But it was the other guys who went deep -- Dominic Canzone and Donovan Solano, with two apiece -- that offered promising signs for players who’ve had their share of extended struggles.
“A really nice job by everybody on offense, but Donnie in particular, and Dom,” Mariners manager Dan Wilson said, “taking advantage of getting an opportunity and making the most of it.”
Solano and Canzone each went 3-for-5, and they combined to drive in half of Seattle’s runs.
What’s fascinating about their progressions is that they’ve taken drastically different ways to rebound, with Solano leaning into his 12 years of MLB experience and not making any significant adjustments, while Canzone has tapped into more extended work with hitting coach Kevin Seitzer and assistant hitting coach Bobby Magallanes.
After Raleigh went deep on the first pitch he saw in the first inning, and the Cubs responded with a solo shot from Seiya Suzuki off Logan Gilbert, Canzone crushed a 394-foot opposite-field shot in the second inning on a middle-middle fastball in a 1-0 count. He came back for an encore in the sixth, yanking a first-pitch slider on the inner half for a 397-foot, direct pull shot.
“Just the way that I move, it just doesn't make much sense for me -- my body doesn't function very well when I'm upright,” Canzone said of a slight change to his setup, which has come with a less pronounced leg kick. “The more I can get into the ground, the better.”
Canzone has always had elite power, which is why the Mariners were so bullish on him after acquiring the slugger from Arizona in the Paul Sewald deal at the 2023 Trade Deadline. But he’s also been susceptible to strikeouts, with a 28.2% K rate last year. That number is down to 12.5% since returning from a nearly 10-week stint at Triple-A Tacoma on June 9. In this stretch, he’s hitting .313 with a 1.027 OPS.
Solano, meanwhile, has stayed the course despite a brutal start to the season in which he was hitting .138 with a .331 OPS through May 23. Since then, those numbers are .450 and 1.200, respectively, after a career-high five RBIs on Sunday.
That’s not to say that Solano won’t make adjustments -- such as selling out for power amid steamy and windy conditions this weekend -- but his swing hasn’t changed. A primarily opposite-field hitter, Solano ambushed both homers on Sunday to the pull side.
“You see like every fly ball is almost going,” Solano said. “The wind is blowing out, so like, on those soft pitches, I try to hit them hard.”
Canzone and Solano will continue to receive extended runway after the Mariners moved on from Rowdy Tellez on Friday, when activating Luke Raley from the injured list. And Raley shouldn’t be discounted in this mix, as he will also be part of the first-base and right-field pictures with the others.
Raley started the first two games of the series and ripped a pair of 109.8 mph pull-side hits, the headliner being one after the Cubs brought in lefty reliever Drew Pomeranz to face him.
How the Mariners allocate playing time between that trio will be worth watching in the coming weeks, given that Solano had been almost exclusively platooned against lefties but has now made consecutive starts against a righty -- including his first by design, as his April 27 start vs. Miami was due to Tellez being hit by a pitch the night prior.
Then in right field, that Canzone got the nod in the finale showed that the Mariners intend to have some sort of split between him and Raley.
These could be good problems to have, especially if the difficult decision to move on from Tellez continues to pay off.