The Seattle Mariners are in the thick of the American League’s pennant race, but they’ve already claimed some hardware this season.
Cal Raleigh hit his MLB-leading 50th home run of the season as the Mariners clinched the inaugural Vedder Cup with a 9-6 victory against the visiting San Diego Padres on Monday night.
The Mariners improved to 4-0 against San Diego this season, with games remaining Tuesday and Wednesday in Seattle.
After being interviewed outside the dugout following the victory, Raleigh was handed the Vedder Cup trophy, a 1963 Fender Telecaster guitar like the one Eddie Vedder, frontman for the legendary rock band Pearl Jam, himself plays. Raleigh strummed the strings before posing for photos with the trophy, which Vedder helped design.
George Webb, Pearl Jam’s longtime equipment manager, brought the guitar to Seattle. He said Vedder jammed on it for about an hour last week after its arrival from Fender’s custom shop.
“He wanted to make something that potentially could live in the team’s clubhouse during the season and be played by players, and appreciated and used,” Webb said. “He doesn’t want it to be a hang-on-the-wall trophy piece. He wants it to be played. That’s his attitude with everything. It’s a living, breathing instrument. It sounds great.”
Writers who were fans of the band nicknamed the interleague series the Vedder Cup about a decade ago, due to the musician’s ties to both Seattle and San Diego, and Major League Baseball made it official this season. With the San Francisco Giants and Athletics as well as the Los Angeles Angels and Dodgers both being geographic rivals on the West Coast, the Padres and Mariners — who share a spring training complex in Peoria, Ariz. — were paired when interleague play began in 1997 and have met in all but one season since.
Raleigh kicked off Monday’s show with a solo shot into the second deck in the first inning. He became the first MLB catcher to reach the 50-homer plateau and only the second player in franchise history to do so — Ken Griffey Jr. hit 56 in both 1997 and 1998.
Jorge Polanco went 3-for-4 with a double, home run and four RBIs Monday for the Mariners, who scored five runs with two outs in the fifth to break a 4-4 tie.
“When you can hit home runs and you can score sort of more conventionally, I think that’s a good sign,” manager Dan Wilson said. “And that’s what the guys did tonight.”
Gavin Sheets, Jake Cronenworth, Fernando Tatis Jr. and Ramon Laureano homered for San Diego.
“I absolutely loved our at-bats tonight,” manager Mike Shildt said. “We had traffic, we had traffic, we had traffic … the bat quality was great; we just couldn’t keep that up later in the game.”
Tuesday’s matchup is scheduled to feature a pair of right-handers in the Padres’ Dylan Cease (6-11, 4.71 ERA) and the Mariners’ Luis Castillo (8-7, 3.57).
Cease, who is 3-1 this month, is coming off an 8-4 victory against visiting San Francisco on Thursday. He’s 0-0 with a 1.80 ERA in one previous start against Seattle.
Castillo gave up three runs on 10 hits over four innings last Wednesday in an 11-2 loss at Philadelphia. He’s 3-3 with a 3.13 ERA in eight career starts against the Padres.
–Field Level Media
