SEATTLE — In just two pitches in the fourth inning Friday night, the Seattle Mariners saw their future come to life.
And they most assuredly liked what they saw.
First, 20-year-old rookie Julio Rodriguez doubled to center field with the bases loaded scoring two runs. On the next pitch, 22-year-old Jarred Kelenic tripled to center to score two more.
Those two hits and a bounce back pitching performance from Chris Flexen were enough to power the Mariners past the Kansas City Royals 4-1 in front of 24,206 at T-Mobile Park Friday night.
Both hits came on four-seam fastballs from Royals starter Brad Keller, who had allowed just two earned runs in 16 innings this season before the fateful fourth Friday.
The double was especially sweet for Rodriguez, whose recent spate of strikeouts — six in his last 13 at-bats before Friday, several on questionable calls — had become a point of discussion.
Rodriguez talked to a group of reporters before the game and insisted the slump wasn’t getting him down, saying with his trademark smile still intact that “it’s going to come around. I guarantee you that.’’
As sports guarantees go, maybe it won’t go into lore like Joe Namath’s before Super Bowl III. And one at-bat hardly a turnaround makes.
But considering the expectations that greeted Rodriguez to start the year and the struggles of the first two weeks it felt like a pretty significant step in the right direction.
Before the double, Rodriguez was 6 for 45 on the season with two runs batted in and only one extra-base hit, a double in his second game at Minnesota on April 9. He got two hits Friday night, also reaching on an infield single in the eighth, for the first multi-hit game of his career.
Kelenic was 6 for 40 for the season and 3 for 21 on the homestand with four runs batted in before his triple.
Each hit came after the Mariners got a big break — a fielding error by Keller on a grounder from Abraham Toro that potentially could have been an inning-ending double play. The Mariners had runners on first and second at the time following singles on soft loopers to the outfield by Eugenio Suarez and J.P. Crawford with one out.
The error was the first of the season for the Royals, whose streak of 11 consecutive games without an error to open the season is an American League record, with San Diego entering the night with a 14-game streak of errorless games that stands as the major league record.
Toro’s went off the glove of Keller, with Toro beating out a throw from Adalberto Mondesi to load the bases.
Rodriguez worked the count to 3-2, just as he had in the second inning, when he flied out to center.
This time, Rodriguez got a little more on it and his drive dropped to the left of center fielder Michael A. Taylor, scoring Suarez and Crawford.
Kelenic followed on the next pitch with a drive to almost the same spot of the park, but a little further, again just escaping Taylor’s glove and bouncing off the wall.
Toro and Rodriguez scored as Kelenic raced for a triple — the second of his career — snapping a 3-21 skid on the homestand. He was also 1-28 on the season on two strike counts before the double.
That was all the scoring the Mariners would get.
Rodriguez was called out looking his next time up in the sixth inning on a sinker high in the zone from Gabe Speier and appeared to turn back to say something to home plate umpire Ben May.
Flexen labored some during his first two starts of the season, giving up 10 hits and six earned runs in 10 1/3 innings, both losses in which the Mariners were shut out, becoming just the 19th pitcher in the Majors to begin a season with his offense shut out in his first two starts since 1995 and the first Mariner ever.
But he looked like the Flexen of much of 2021 — when his he went 14-6 as one of the surprise players of the season — from the start Friday.
Flexen gave up hits in each of the first three innings, but emerged unscathed each time.
In the first, he struck out Salvador Perez, who in his last trip to Seattle last August hit home runs in all four games of a series including two grand slams, to end the inning with a runner on third.
And after Taylor led off the third with a single he got Nicky Lopez to ground into a 4-6-3 double play on the next pitch.
He got out of trouble again in the fifth when the Royals had back-to-back infield singles — one a bunt — to put runners on first and second with one out.
But Flexen again got out of it.
His only mistake was a hanging changeup that Perez clubbed over the left field wall for a solo homer in the sixth for his fifth homer of the year.
Flexen left after seven innings and 84 pitches, allowing six hits and one run with five strikeouts and no walks. Right-hander Anthony Misiewicz then came on and pitched a scoreless eighth and Andres Munoz the ninth.
Keller, who entered the game having allowed just five hits and two earned runs in 13 innings cruised through the first three innings allowing just a single and a walk before the Mariners’ youth-fueled explosion in the fourth that turned the game.
Keller was chased after allowing a hit and a walk with one out in the bottom of the fifth.
The game also proved a nice bounce for the Mariners, who were coming off a sloppy and disappointing 8-6 loss to the Texas Rangers on Thursday night in which they blew a 5-0 lead, in part due to committing a season-high three errors.
The Mariners, 6-2 in their last eight games, will face the Royals in game two of the three-game series Saturday at 6:10 p.m. at T-Mobile Park with righty Matt Brash (1-1, 3.38 earned-run average) making the third start of his career against Kansas City lefty Kris Bubic (0-1, 10.80).
