The M’s dropped a 7-5 decision to the Angels tonight, tough to swallow even with both clubs officially out of the running. Yeah, pride. The Angels, clawing to avoid a 100-loss season, snagged the win in this back-and-forth, leaving us here in the Emerald City with that familiar late-season ache. Tonight just felt like another game that makes you want to put the ‘wake’ in ‘Wake Me When September Ends.’
Bryce Miller’s Grinding Night
Bryce Miller looked pretty hittable in the first, no whiffs and giving up hard contact. He got stung by a Wade Meckler triple that rolled out of Josh Naylor’s reach down the right field line. Then Meckler scooted home on a wild pitch, a splitter Miller buried in the dirt. But hey, Miller showed real fight, eventually getting whiffs in the second, including a nasty curveball strikeout and an elevated fastball that got Josh Lowe chasing. You love to see that determination!
Thing is, those early innings were a relentless grind. Lowe’s at-bat alone ate nine pitches, adding to an eight-pitch at-bat in the first. Miller walked Mike Trout on seven pitches, a real blow to his pitch count and FIP. He tried to get back into it, but left a first-pitch slider for Meckler, who kept it to a single this time. Then Vaughn Grissom jumped on a first-pitch splitter for an RBI single. To be fair, Miller pitched better than his line tonight, battling through those deep counts. It’s just brutal luck when every pitch feels like a marathon.
Defensive Gems and Gut Punches
Seriously, Emerald City, can we talk about Dominic Canzone? He made an eleventh-hour submission for his best catch of the year out in right field. This was spectacular. If you missed it, you absolutely missed a highlight-reel moment. MLB didn’t even clip it, which proves they haven’t watched as much of Dom playing right field as we have! But the baseball gods, man, they’re truly cruel. They instantly punished Canzone by letting Bryce Teodosio make an equally excellent leaping grab to rob Dom of extra bases in the very next half-inning. A 404-foot out, literally turning us away without an answer-back score. That’s a full-on knockout!
It wasn’t just Canzone’s monster shot that didn’t go anywhere. Cole Young blasted a 401-foot flyout in the fifth inning, another ball crushed but that ended up in a glove. Those two, along with Canzone’s, were two of the furthest hit balls all night, aside from Zach Neto’s eighth-inning homer off Eduard Bazardo. It was one of those games where everything we hit seemed to die on the warning track or land exactly in a glove. We needed those to drop, we really did.
What Now, Emerald City?
So yeah, tonight was a fruitless game between two eliminated teams. It’s tough to watch when the stakes are just pride, and even that felt elusive tonight. It’s a long road ahead, Emerald City, and tonight just drove home how long. We gotta keep our chins up for the next one and look for those small victories wherever we can find ’em, but man, this one stings. We expect more, even in September.
This article was created with AI assistance and published under Seattle On Tap’s editorial standards. See our Editorial Policy.
Originally reported by Lookout Landing.
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