Wild-card road trip to Toronto like homecoming for Mariners right-hander Matt Brash

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KINGSTON — Major League Baseball’s American League wild-card series may be technically a road trip for the Seattle Mariners and Kingston rookie pitcher Matt Brash, but playing in Toronto is as close as it can get to home for Brash, his family and friends.

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The Mariners (90-72 in the regular season) will be taking on the Toronto Blue Jays (92-70) in a best-of-three set on Friday, Saturday and perhaps Sunday. All games will be played in Toronto.

Brash’s parents, Jamie and Sandra, along with his sister, Carlye, and other family and friends will be in attendance at the Rogers Centre should Matt make an appearance in a relief role.

“It’s been an exciting year and now we’re just topping it off,” Sandra said in a phone interview on Thursday. “Matt feels good. We talked to him briefly today. He’s excited to be in the post-season, and what an incredible year.”

Sandra said the family would have gone to any city where Matt would have been pitching in the playoffs, but Toronto works out to be the most convenient.

“We were going wherever they were going,” she said.

During the season, the Brashes watched the Mariners play in Detroit, Cleveland and Chicago, as well as in Toronto.

“We got to see a few (games) — not as many as we’d like to. We’d like to go to every single game,” she said. “With games on the West Coast, it makes it kind of tricky.”

If he gets into a game, Brash will be pitching against his favourite boyhood team.

“We were always going to Blue Jays games when Matt and Carlye were growing up,” Sandra said.

Sandra said he wore a Blue Jays hat and jersey as a boy.

The 24-year-old, six-foot-one, 173-pound right-hander pitched as both a starter and reliever in the 2022 season. He also spent some time in Triple-A working on his craft.

With the Mariners, fours were wild for Brash in 2022 when it came to his pitching statistics. He had four wins and four losses and posted a 4.44 earned-run average.

He was a starter for the first five of his 39 appearances, and he struck out 62 batters in 50.2 innings overall. He gave up 17 earned runs in 20 innings as a starter (7.65 ERA) before turning things around and allowing just eight earned runs in 30.2 relief innings (2.35 ERA).

“Hopefully we’ll see Matt before the games, maybe. I don’t know, but definitely after the games. We have some friends and families coming, so it should be good to try and connect with people,” Sandra said.

Brash’s former minor baseball coach, Randy Casford, will be at Saturday’s game. On Friday, he’s being inducted into the Kingston and District Sports Hall of Fame.

“It’s pretty awesome. I think it’s good for Canada, good for Ontario, good for Kingston and good for Matt,” Casford said. “Obviously he wants to play at home, but if you’re going to play anywhere else, it might as well be Toronto, where local people from your own city can come and see it.”

Casford has secured tickets to the sold-out games for himself, his wife, Leeann, and son Kyle for Saturday and a possible Sunday game.

The pressures of a major league pitcher may have gotten to Brash early in his career, Casford said on the former’s brief demotion to the minors.

“Maybe he lost a little bit of confidence and needed to regroup, so they sent him back down. They knew he’d be back up, whether it was as a starter or reliever, and they added (another) starter, so they put him in a relief role and he’s been lights out ever since,” Casford said.

imacalpine@postmedia.com