Mariners continue their stumble coming out off All-Star break, drop another to Twins
How they’ve lost games this season has varied in ways, sometimes surprising, other times amusing and all times frustrating, specifically coming out of the All-Star break.
Why they are losing games has largely remained the same since opening day; and with the exception of brief stretches, including the 10 games before the break, it doesn’t seem to be changing.
They’ve lost too many games that should’ve been wins. They’ve dropped too many series to teams they should beat.
And with each defeat, it only moves this team — which started the season with division-title aspirations — closer to being dismantled at the looming Major League Baseball trade deadline and irrelevant in the final months of the season.
A late-inning rally powered by Eugenio Suarez’s game-tying, two-run homer in the seventh inning gave the Mariners a brief hope of pulling out a victory. However, a costly mistake from their veteran catcher and a misplaced changeup from a young right-hander pitching at the MLB level for the first time led to an eventual 6-3 loss to the Minnesota Twins.
“It’s disappointing,” manager Scott Servais said. “You fight back like that and tie the game and the momentum is going your way, but unfortunately, we couldn’t keep it going.”
Advertising
It dropped the Mariners to a game under .500 at 47-48. After losing a series to the lowly Tigers, they are 2-4 coming out of the All-Star break and will try to split the four-game series with Minnesota on Thursday afternoon with George Kirby getting the start.
Conversely, the Angels, playing without Mike Trout, are 4-2 out of the break against the Astros and Yankees.
Brought in to pitch the eighth inning of a 3-3 game, reliever Andres Muñoz allowed a leadoff single to Max Kepler and a one-out single to Willi Castro that put runners on the corners with one out. He came back to strike out Kyle Farmer to set up a possible scoreless inning.
However, when a 1-1 slider to pinch-hitter Donovan Solano stayed above the strike zone, catcher Tom Murphy, who had called for the pitch low and away, couldn’t grab what was deemed a catchable pitch. The ball hit off the top of his glove, going all the way to the backstop. The passed ball allowed Kepler to race home with the go-ahead run.
The lead ballooned to three runs in the ninth inning when rookie right-hander Devin Sweet, who was called up from Double-A Arkansas earlier in the day to make his MLB debut, gave up a two-run homer to Alex Kirilloff.
“Munoz has such a good wipeout slide and you’re looking for the ball down and you’re ready to block it,” Servais said. “It stayed up and got away from Murph. They got a couple of hits in the inning to create the traffic and to create an opportunity and they got a break.”
Advertising
The traffic on the bases has been constant for the Twins in the first three games of the series. With their nine hits and six walks in the win, they have racked up 35 hits and 14 walks in the three games vs. Seattle pitchers.
“They’ve made us work — all their guys up and down the lineup,” Servais said.
Luis Castillo gave the Mariners a “quality start” by metric if not by expectation. He allowed three runs on six hits over six innings with two walks and 11 strikeouts. Was it his most dominant outing? No.
But it was good enough to give Seattle a chance to win.
“I thought Luis was outstanding tonight,” Servais said. “I thought that’s as good of stuff as we’ve seen from him right from the start.”
Realistically, even if Castillo had been slightly more efficient to work one more inning or made one less mistake to allow one run fewer, the Mariners still lose the game.
Advertising
The first run allowed came in the second inning. A leadoff walk, which rarely ends well for a pitcher, started Castillo’s problems. The free pass to Matt Wallner turned into a run when he advanced to second on a one-out single by Kyle Farmer and then scored with two outs when Ryan Jeffers was able to sneak a ground ball up the middle through a modified shift for a 1-0 lead.
“When I saw the ball get hit and right in the middle, I thought it was going to be caught,” Castillo said through interpreter Freddy Llanos. “But I always say, when you walk the first person, I always think that there’s a 60% chance that they’re going to score.”
The Twins picked up a pair of runs in the fifth inning on solo homers from Edourd Julien and Max Kepler. Julien, who had six hits, including a homer and four runs scored, in the previous two games, smoked a 97-mph fastball over the wall in right field.
Castillo left a changeup to Kepler up in the zone, and it was hammered into the seats in right for a 3-0 lead.
Meanwhile, the Mariners offense was doing basically nothing against Twins starter Kenta Maeda over that same span of five innings.
J.P. Crawford led off the game with a single to center and was quickly erased two batters later with Jarred Kelenic’s inning-ending double play.
Sponsored
After Crawford’s single, Maeda retired the next 15 hitters in a row. He did get some help with shortstop Carlos Correa making an impressive diving grab on Teoscar Hernandez’s hard line drive to left.
Murphy broke up Maeda’s string of consecutive batters retired with one out in the sixth inning. He ambushed a first-pitch slider, smashing a solo homer to left field. It was his sixth homer of the season, and the Mariners’ second hit of the game.
Seattle was able to tie the game in the seventh inning after knocking Maeda out of the game. Kelenic’s hard single to right field with one out ended Maeda’s outing at 80 pitches.
His replacement Griffin Jax got ahead quickly on Suarez. But he left a 1-2 slider over the middle of the plate, and Suarez hammered it into the Mariners’ bullpen for his 14th homer of the season.
Seattle made it somewhat interesting in the ninth vs. Twins closer Jhoan Duran. Crawford led off by reaching on an error and Julio Rodriguez was hit in the elbow guard by a 103-mph fastball. But Kelenic lost a nine-pitch battle, striking out looking, Suarez grounded out to shortstop and Mike Ford struck out swinging to end the game.
Source: The Seattle Times
