Mariners’ Bryce Miller had Blue Jays beat before ALCS Game 1 began

TORONTO — How do you follow 15 innings?

How do you run a marathon through a minefield, throwing 209 total pitches, then do it all again? How do you lift a city, then reset less than two days later? How do you shake a Champagne shower that was two-plus decades overdue? How do you author an emotional epic and nail the encore?

Undermanned and overtaxed, how do you deliver?

The answer, in Game 1 of the American League Championship Series on Sunday night, was simple.

Who cares about the context?

You collectively overcome.

In a 3-1 win over the Toronto Blue Jays, that’s what Bryce Miller and the Mariners did. Seattle’s 27-year-old starter fell into a first-pitch pit, serving up a leadoff homer to designated hitter George Springer. Miller’s 97-mph fastball was viciously redirected over the right-field fence, as 44,474 fans in the Rogers Centre roared. Springer walked slowly to first base, watching his work.

In a 27-pitch first inning, Miller danced with disaster — surrendering two walks and the solo homer, plus two lucky line-outs with exit velocities surpassing 100 mph.

He could’ve crumbled.

But Miller didn’t blink.

He conceded a single and a walk in five more scoreless innings, remarkably righting the Mariners’ ship. Despite starting on short rest, and doing so with a bone spur in his pitching elbow, Miller saved a beleaguered bullpen and squashed Toronto’s sizable early momentum.

In his only regular-season start against Toronto on May 11, Miller was mobbed for eight hits and seven runs in five innings.

On Sunday, Miller pulled himself out of the pit.

“Coming back tonight and getting Game 1 is obviously a big momentum shift for us,” Mariners manager Dan Wilson said. “A lot of work to do yet, but the job Bryce Miller did tonight was phenomenal.”

The job was done before he ever did it. At 1:38 p.m., Miller sat alone with his back against the center-field fence, 400 feet from home plate. While the Blue Jays practiced bunts, he saw the future. Arms crossed, he torched Toronto. He won more than three hours before first pitch.

“Going into it, I knew this was the biggest start of my career so far,” Miller said, “and I just wanted to get out there and mentally get in the zone and visualize having success on the mound. That’s something [Adam Bernero], our mental skills guy, walks us through — visualizing certain pitches, with runners on, in the stretch, seeing yourself from a third-person view having success. That way when you’re in the moment it feels like you’ve already been there.

“I try to do that and kind of settle down. There’s been a lot of excitement and nerves coming into today, coming off the long game in Seattle two nights ago. I was taking a moment for myself.”

Miller wasn’t the only Mariner who overcame in critical moments. Seattle wasted an early opportunity Sunday, when catcher Cal Raleigh — who struck a line-drive single, then advanced to third after Julio Rodríguez did the same — attempted to score on Jorge Polanco’s first-inning chopper. Third baseman Addison Barger’s throw beat Raleigh home instead, and Seattle went the next five innings without a base runner.

But Raleigh overcame, with conviction. With two outs in the sixth inning, he bent his knees and golfed Kevin Gausman’s splitter into the right-field seats, holding the bat over his head as proof of punishment. It was Raleigh’s fourth homer in 15 at-bats against Gausman and his ninth in a continually tormented Toronto.

It was also 420 feet of mashing, 108-mph amends.

“Just getting out there and hooking that ball, we’ve seen Cal do that so often,” Wilson said. “Big situation there to get us back tied. That was a big lift in terms of our dugout, getting us back in it.”

Pardon the repetition, but Seattle’s bullpen overcame the pile of pitches it threw Friday, holding the Blue Jays without a base runner in three impressive innings. Gabe Speier overcame two disastrous ALDS outings, spinning a 1-2-3 seventh to maintain the lead. Polanco overcame an 0-for-2 start, producing an RBI single from each side of the plate. The Mariners overcame 15 innings, plus a flight delay, to seize momentum (and home-field advantage) in the best-of-seven series.

Randy Arozarena overcame his own continued slump. Though he’s 4 for 27 (.148) with one RBI and 10 strikeouts in Seattle’s six playoff games, the right fielder slid to snag Anthony Santander’s sinking liner to end the seventh inning. He then walked to start the eighth, stole second and third, and scored on Polanco’s seeing-eye single.  

You’re not supposed to win when your short-rest starter struggles in the first inning.

You’re not supposed to win when you go five innings without a base runner in a deafening dome.

You’re not supposed to win, on the road, two days after surviving a 15-inning siege.

But the Mariners also weren’t supposed to beat Tigers ace Tarik Skubal twice — in the same series.

That collective overcoming has defined Seattle’s season.

As for the mustachioed Texan sitting in center field?

Wearing a beanie and sweats, Miller beat the Blue Jays. They just didn’t know it yet.