SEATTLE — Eugenio and Genesis Suárez, husband and wife, had long envisioned a moment like the one he experienced here Friday evening, when his dramatic grand slam moved the Seattle Mariners within one victory of winning the AL Championship Series.
With Seattle trailing the Toronto Blue Jays 2-1 in the bottom of the eighth inning, Cal Raleigh tied the score with a solo home run, and then four batters later, Suárez blasted a bases-loaded shot over the right-field wall — his second homer of the game — to help the Mariners win 6-2 in Game 5 of the ALCS.
Seattle has a 3-2 lead in the best-of-seven series that moves back to Toronto for Game 6 and, if necessary, Game 7.
On Sunday, rookie Trey Yesavage starts the must-win Game 6 for Toronto.
“We still have home-field advantage,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said. “As cool of an environment it is to play here, I know that our fans are going to be ready for us to get home on Sunday. I’ve said it all along. It’s a seven-game series, and we did our job coming in here taking two out of three, and we’re going to go home and we’re going to definitely be ready to play.
“All we can do is enjoy the flight back to Toronto, enjoy our beds at our homes and our families, and we’re going to get after it on Sunday. … We’ll get after it on Sunday. We’ll be ready to play. I wouldn’t have it any other way with this group. Our backs are going to be against the wall, great. We don’t give a s—. … It’s going to be fun, and I hope these guys are ready for it.”
This is Suárez’s 12th year in the majors and, afterward, he explained that he and his wife had prayed for a moment like this, when all parts of his life would collide, professional and personal, success and joy and family, melded together.
“I’ve been waiting for games like this my whole career,” Suárez said. “Today, I had it. Today, I had it in front of our crowd, in front of my family, my two daughters, my wife, and the moment is very special right now.”
It was unexpected, based on what occurred in recent days and in the early innings of this game. The Jays had blown out the Mariners in Games 3 and 4, and then in Game 5, Toronto took a 2-1 lead when Ernie Clement singled home Alejandro Kirk in the sixth inning. Schneider placed that lead in the hands of left-hander Brendon Little in the eighth inning, continuing to throw different relievers at different parts of the Seattle lineup, rather than allowing the Mariners’ best hitters get accustomed to the same relievers day after day.
But Raleigh, batting right-handed, clubbed a high fly ball to left — it felt like the ball was in the air for an hour, Mariners manager Dan Wilson said later — and after reaching an apex of 155 feet, it dropped into the stands. Tie score.
Raleigh and Suárez were the only stable parts in a lineup that had been altered before this game, with Wilson moving Julio Rodriguez to the leadoff spot and Josh Naylor to cleanup, dropping Randy Arozarena to the fifth spot. But for Little, the sequence of hitters didn’t really matter; he just couldn’t throw strikes.
He walked Jorge Polanco, and Naylor. Seranthony Dominguez replaced him, and hit Arozarena with a pitch, loading the bases for Suárez, who had hit a solo homer in the second inning.
Suárez played for the Mariners in 2022 and 2023 and in that time, his Seattle teammates came to appreciate his relentless good nature and his positive personality. On the July day that Seattle reacquired him from the Diamondbacks, he happened to be passing through the same Sacramento airport as the Mariners — Seattle had just finished a series against the Athletics, and the Diamondbacks were just arriving. The Mariners’ charter held for Suárez and his family to collect their things at baggage claim, and as the Suárez clan boarded the Seattle express, the players cheered happily.
Suárez didn’t hit especially well in his 53 regular-season games with the Mariners, batting .189 with 13 homers, struggles that continued into this postseason; he had a .162 average for October going into Game 5. In pregame work throughout this slump, Suárez had focused on driving the ball through the middle of the field, but without results.
Dominguez threw three straight sweepers, trying to get Suárez to hack at something outside of the strike zone; Suárez took one for a strike, fouled off another. When Dominguez fired a 97 mph fastball, Suárez fouled it off. The count was 2-2.
Bryce Miller had been in the clubhouse when Raleigh tied the score with his home run, and returned to the dugout, where he was standing next to Logan Gilbert as they watched Suárez’s at-bat. “Hey,” Gilbert said dryly to Miller, “all I’m asking for is a home run.”
Dominguez’s next pitch was 98 miles mph, on the outer third of the plate, and Suárez leaned into his swing, aiming to take the ball to right field. Contact. The Jays’ Nathan Lukes ran back to the warning track, head tilted upward to track the fly and then peeled off; there was nothing he could do. The home run landed three rows into the stands, and there was nothing Barger could do.
Suárez lifted both hands toward the sky, as if to accept a gift, and jogged slowly around the bases. T-Mobile Park, Wilson said later, was as loud as he had ever heard it. Rodriguez ran onto the field, briefly forgetting where he was and what he needed to do; when he regained some equilibrium, he raced back to the dugout, grabbed the Mariners’ trident and handed it to Suárez, who hoisted it into the air and yelled, sharing the moment with the crowd.
Not long after the Mariners’ closed out the Game 5 victory, Suárez slipped into a side door of the interview room with his two young daughters, Nicolle and Melanie, guiding with a hand on the shoulder of each. They had flown in from Florida late Thursday night, arriving at 1 a.m., and now they were with him as he met spoke with the media.
A reporter asked the girls what was the best thing about their Dad. Nicolle spoke up. “Doing the home run,” she said.
On this day, two home runs. The girls are flying back to Miami on a redeye tonight, Eugenio said as he walked out of the interview room, because Nicolle has a presentation in school Monday, while Eugenio is headed to Toronto. That is where the Mariners need one more win to reach the World Series for the first time in the history of the franchise.
“I just feel so grateful right now,” Suárez said, “and feel so good because we’re going to Toronto with an opportunity in front of us to go to a World Series.”
