SEATTLE — The Seattle Mariners were able to earn their eighth-straight win, and ar third consecutive series win, with an 8-3 victory against the New York Mets on Tuesday at T-Mobile Park.

Mariners starting pitcher Logan Gilbert, who worked with the lead for most of his outing, had a respectable outing to help guide his team to victory.

Gilbert came just two outs shy of his fifth quality start of the season and finished with eight strikeouts, one walk, one hit batter and three earned runs allowed on four hits (two home runs) in 5.1 innings pitched.

All three of Gilbert's runs allowed came via a pair of home runs hit by outfielder Carson Benge.

Benge's first blast was a two-run shot in the top of the third and the second of the pair was a solo blast in the top of the sixth.

Both pitches hit out of the park were left in the heart of the plate: a 91.4-mile per hour cutter on the first and a 95-mph four-seam fastball on the second.

Gilbert's strikeouts were almost an equal three-way split: three put aways with his splitter, three with his four-seamer and two with his slider.

In addition to those four aforementioned pitches, Gilbert also threw his curveball and his changeup.

Tuesday's outing was a perfect display of the 2024 All-Star's expansive arsenal. Which can lead to both positives and negatives.

Gilbert's cutter, in particular, is a perfect example of that.

The cutter has a major split between practical and expected statistics. According to Baseball Savant, batters are hitting .370 and slugging .524 against the pitch. The expected batting average (xBA) against the pitch is .261 with an expected slug (xSLG) of .525. The home run from Benge was just the third extra-base hit, and first homer, Gilbert's allowed with it in 121 offerings this season. And he still feels confident in it.

"I don't know really know all the under-the-hood numbers on it," Gilbert said in a postgame interview Tuesday. "Feels pretty good, so we use it in certain counts. Really haven't been using it a ton lately but I feel like it's there if we need it. Definitely a mix of pitches."

In comparison, two of Gilbert's most effective pitches, the curveball and the changeup, were hardly used.

Gilbert's thrown the changeup 91 times this season and has opted for the curveball 118 times. Hitters are averaging .222 against the curveball and .120 against the changeup. He has as whiff rate of 31.6 percent with the curveball and 31.4 percent with the changeup to go with put-away rates of 13.9 and 25.7 percent, respectively.

On Tuesday, Gilbert threw the curveball once, the changeup eight times and the cutter twice, opting to stick mostly with the four-seam, splitter and slider.

"(Curveball's) been feeling good," Gilbert said. "I thought about that, actually, after I came out that we didn't really use it a ton. I think we can. I think it's definitely an option. ... There's a bunch of options so sometimes it can kind of work against you. You can't throw everything at the same time. I think we can definitely use it more, it's just having some of those conversations with (the catchers) about when to use it and what batters we're looking to use it to."

Gilbert's repertoire offers catchers a lot of options to game plan with and opposing hitters a lot of looks to keep an eye out for. That can lead to the two scoreless starts (three in his last five) that Gilbert had before Tuesday.

Other nights, like Tuesday, that can work against Gilbert. But considering how he's pitched this season, it's safe to say that he and the catchers have planned correctly more often than not.

Gilbert has a 3.79 ERA and has struck out 77 hitters in 73.2 innings pitched across 13 starts this season.

The Mariners (33-29) will go for a sweep of the Mets at 12:40 p.m. PT on Wednesday.

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