After the faceplant against the Rays and the slide through the Bronx this week – where even the lone win felt lackadaisical – I had convinced myself I was beyond caring about the 2026 Mariners. There have been so many bad losses, and bad series, and overall bad baseball that it’s tough to get worked up about any one game. But tonight’s crushing extra-inning loss to the Astros seemed designed in a lab by an evil baseball god scientist to find that one last neuron in my fan-brain capable of feeling
pain, and then went ahead and dragged a white-hot knife right down the middle. A recipe for a cocktail of pain: an unheralded prospect making his debut; a meltdown from my favorite Mariner Andrés Muñoz; and the Houston Astros, shaken and spread out over nine innings. Congratulations, evil baseball scientist. You got me.
The image of Ralph Wiggum, heart rended, is a slide that plays on a rotating carousel on the projection screen in my brain. To be Ralph – to dare to hope to love, to be brave in love, and then to be made foolish by that love – is to be embarrassed, with his round face and too-tight suit and cheap paintbrush hairline. Why bother loving anything at all, ever? It’s easier when the Mariners make themselves unlovable, efficiently, efficaciously unlovable, which they’d been doing a pretty good job of for the past week or so.
Once again the Mariners got off to a quick start in this one, starting with a one-out double from Randy Arozarena; Randy would then be knocked in on an RBI single from Dominic Canzone, and then a Julio Rodríguez double and a sac fly from Josh Naylor made it 2-0 as the Mariners put early pressure on Astros starter Peter Lambert.
But this is a story we’ve seen before, and George Kirby wound up giving up one of those runs right back in the most predictable fashion, hanging a changeup that Yordan Álvarez predictably knocked over the fence. But it was in the second inning where things went sideways, with the Astros tying it up and then pulling ahead. Kirby got two quick outs but then couldn’t find the third, falling behind Christian Walker 3-0 before allowing a single, and then giving up an unlucky triple to Cam Smith that got past a diving Brendan Donovan at third base, allowing the slow-footed Walker to score all the way from first and tying the game.
That was unlucky. But Kirby continued to struggle, going to a full count against nine-hole hitter Christian Vázquez before walking him on the eighth pitch of the at-bat and turning the lineup over for Jeremy Peña, who yanked a little weak-contact single right past Josh Naylor for the go-ahead run and bringing up the ever-dangerous Álvarez. In a 3-1 count, Kirby balked, moving the runners over and triggering an automatic walk for Álvarez, but that left Isaac Paredes now in position with the bases loaded. Paredes chopped a ball toward Donovan at third, who couldn’t complete the throw, allowing two runs to score, and Donovan lost his mind for a little, thinking the ball was foul. It was pretty close but: fair seems to be the right call, even as we admire Donovan’s fight.
Things didn’t get much easier for Kirby after that, pushing well past the 30-pitch mark for the inning – usually when a pitcher gets pulled – after going to yet another full count against Taylor Trammell, but Kirby was able to get a groundout and end the bleeding there. Yes, lots of fluky bad BABIP luck in that inning, but also some poor process from Kirby in not getting the third out, falling behind hitters, and committing the balk. At least at 5-2 it felt safe tuning this one out and setting to work on a themed recap (written in the voice of Sister Michael from Derry Girls, thanks to commenter 12arods for the idea).
Playing from behind, the Mariners did what they usually do in these losses that are becoming intimately familiar: they became overly aggressive in the box, chasing pitches despite him issuing a pair of early walks, making weak contact or quick outs, failing to stack baserunners, and allowing Lambert to finish five innings despite his earlier shakiness.
But here is where the story of the typical Mariners loss starts to shift. The Mariners bullpen, which has been so porous lately, was actually nails during the back half of the game despite Kirby only making it through not-quite-five innings himself after his early elevated pitch count. Michael Rucker delivered the final out of the fourth, getting Kirby out of a jam, and then a perfect fifth; Gabe Speier looked the sharpest he has in a while with a 1-2-3 inning with a strikeout, and Eduard Bazardo turned in two perfect innings with two strikeouts, showing some nasty movement on the sweeper.
The other part that changes the narrative: the Mariners actually added on against the Houston bullpen, which has had its own issues this year. The Mariners were able to claw one back in the sixth after Lambert departed, taking advantage of a leadoff Josh Naylor double; Victor Robles then came up with the rare clutch base hit to score him from third. Unfortunately, they couldn’t add on with two outs and Brock Rodden, making his major league debut, up, as he struck out, which is okay because it was his major-league debut.
And here is where things get dangerous, because hope is dangerous, like love is dangerous; hope can leave you wandering about like an astronaut on the moon, alone, which is not an unfamiliar way to consume these 2026 Mariners. They added another one in the eighth, this time small-balling around a run after a leadoff Julio walk, stolen base, and then two groundouts; Cal Raleigh walked to extend the inning and Robles beat out an infield hit for his second two-out hit of the day, but again that brought up Rodden, who again, and this part is important, was making his major-league debut.
But because life isn’t a move, this ball didn’t quite have enough to make it over the fence, but did have enough to hop said fence and keep the speedy Robles from scoring from first. On a night when the ball quite literally didn’t bounce the Mariners’ way on multiple occasions, this one might have hurt the most.
No, that’s a lie, because what happened next hurt the most. The Mariners couldn’t get anything across against Josh Hader in the ninth – although props to Dominic Canzone, who did work a hard-hit left-on-left single against him, creeping those R/L splits ever-closer together, and then Josh Naylor took back some bad batted ball luck from earlier when he reached on a little check-swing infield hit that rolled about a foot in front of home plate, but that brought up another lefty in Brendan Donovan. Donovan worked himself a full count – partially thanks to a clever ABS challenge – and fought for eight pitches, but stung a ball directly at Trammell in left field. Bad luck balls, all around.
Bazardo, as mentioned, held it down for a second inning of work, and the Astros brought on Enyel De Los Santos for extras. Robles greeted him with his third hit of the ballgame, this time a one-out triple scoring Donovan, the ghost runner, from second, and then Rodden came through again with a sac fly, working an eight-pitch plate appearance where he got the bat to a changeup off the plate and punched it just deep enough to left to score the speedy Robles. With a two-run cushion and Andrés Muñoz still to come, it felt like victory would, improbably, be within the Mariners’ grasp.
It was not. Muñoz gave up a one-out RBI single to Isaac Paredes, then got his second out, then gave up an extremely bad luck hit to Altuve, who, in a two-strike count, lunged after a slider in the opposite batter’s box and somehow blooped it into right field to put runners at the corners. That was followed by a game-tying single from Astros deadline acquisition Daulton Varsho, still around to hurt the Mariners, on a similar BABIP-fueled ground ball single. Trying to just get that final out and move the game along, Muñoz then made his one real mistake of the inning, hanging a slider in a 1-0 count to Christian Walker for a game-winning home run.
Love does indeed hurt.
