The Mariners played a baseball game Thursday. They lost, 11-0.
Heading into the series with the Detroit Tigers, the Mariners were slightly favored on paper to take two of three games. After all, the Mariners managed to avoid Tarik Skubal and Casey Mize, who were both traded away by the Tigers at this week’s trade deadline. Detroit was also without notorious Mariners killer Kerry Carpenter, who is currently on the injured list. With the series being played at home, and the Mariners boasting a couple
of modest deadline additions of their own, an opportunity to get back on track was there for the taking.
In reality, however, the Mariners were running into a team that had been playing (and specifically, hitting) well of late. To make matters worse, they weren’t running out their best squad for an important rubber game. Three of the team’s ideal starters — Cal Raleigh, Josh Naylor and Brendan Donovan — were all out of the lineup for either rest or scheduled days off. They were without their everyday manager in Dan Wilson, who was suspended a game after last night’s bench-clearing incident; bench coach Manny Acta was tasked with the managerial duties. On top of all of that, they were facing Framber Valdez, having struggled mightily against lefties all year long.
Not exactly the best set of circumstances to try to win a game! But it’s baseball, and the Mariners would have Bryce Miller on the bump, even if he has cooled off from his late, albeit productive start to the season. There was hope.
That hope was short-lived.
From the get-go, Miller didn’t have his best command. After he surrendered a leadoff walk to rookie sensation Kevin McGonigle and worked from behind to force a Gleyber Torres flyout, Dillon Dingler took a 2-1 cutter to the opposite field for a two-run homer. He homered in every game of the series.
The hits kept coming for the Tigers, with Riley Greene depositing a ground-rule double over the wall in the right field corner. Colt Keith then produced a double of his own to drive in Greene.
Miller, with the help of an ABS challenge by Jhonny Pereda to secure a strikeout of Max Clark, was able to hunker down and get the final two outs and prevent further damage. But when all was said and done, Miller threw 40 pitches in the first inning, the most for any Mariners starter in the first inning all year, and had the 3-0 deficit to accompany.
“Just a really, really frustrating way to start the game,” Miller said. “Just immediately put us in a hole, and we’re on defense for — it felt like 30 minutes. But it felt like we settled in and made a lot of good pitches after that…But I know I can’t start the game like that. We have to be more competitive.”
“Walks are bad — not only him, but the rest of the guys — and it seemed like whenever we ended up walking a guy, a long ball followed,” Acta said.
Randy Arozarena reached with a walk in the bottom half, but the Mariners were unable to do anything with it despite hitting a couple of balls hard.
In the top half of the second, McGonigle was again able to get on base, this time with a one-out single up the middle. And even though Miller was able to get Torres to ground out for the second out of the inning, Dingler haunted the Mariners once again, shooting an RBI single down the right field line to extend the lead to 4-0.
From that point forward, it never felt like the Mariners were really in the game. Even though Miller was able to settle in and get through five innings, Mariners baserunners were frequently erased when they looked to chip away. The Mariners grounded into four double plays over the course of the afternoon.
The floodgates opened later on in the seventh with Cole Wilcox pitching. He allowed a two-run homer to McGonigle to fall behind 6-0. Two additional runs would score as well — one of which coming on a throwing error by Taylor Ward, who missed his cutoff man. Ward was making his first start of the year in right field, but it didn’t stop the boo birds from coming out from an increasingly restless T-Mobile Park.
Wilcox would leave that game in that seventh inning after grabbing at his side. Official word from the team is left oblique tightness.
I will not lie, I did not enjoy having to watch this game by the second inning. It felt like a chore. Even Víctor Robles making his first pitching appearance provided little consolation — three runs came across in his ninth inning to cement an embarrassing 11-0 loss. A short memory will be imperative for the Mariners with the top team in the American League, the Tampa Bay Rays, coming to town Friday.
I don’t need to wax poetic any further. Today’s game was a clunker. The Mariners need to find some answers with a quickness.
Acta said it best. “Overall just not a good game.”
