Whether they admit it or not, and they certainly wouldn’t publicly, the Mariners’ starting pitchers have been conditioned to expect minimal run support when they take their respective turns on the mound.
It’s a mentality born of experience and empirical evidence that the Mariners provided an average of 3.2 runs per game when their starters are in the game, the third lowest in all of MLB.
It’s hard to work when two runs allowed can be two runs too many. And allowing three or more, well, good luck with that.
So even if Logan Gilbert had dominated for six or seven innings and held the Astros scoreless on Thursday, it wouldn’t have been good enough.
Because?
His teammates were held scoreless in a game for the third time this season.
Rookie Spencer Arrighetti had a dominant start for the Astros, limiting the Mariners to two hits in the first six innings, as Houston avoided being swept in the four-game series with a 4-0 victory.
“I said before the game that it’s very difficult to sweep a four-game series, and to do it you have to have all sides working,” manager Scott Servais said. “Going into today’s game, we talked about the need to come out early and try to get some runs on the board. “That didn’t happen.”
It didn’t happen early or late or anywhere in between.
The Mariners struggled in the Thursday afternoon sun at T-Mobile Park. They managed just two hits in the first eight innings and got two in the ninth inning off Astros closer Josh Hader. But only twice did they put a runner in scoring position. They struck out 12 times.
Arrighetti came into the game with a 2-5 record and a 6.93 ERA. He came away with a 3-5 record and a 5.98 ERA. In addition to the six scoreless innings and two hits allowed, he walked three and struck out nine. He got first-pitch strikes to 19 of the 24 batters he faced and had 14 strikeouts on pitches.
“He’s a guy we haven’t seen before,” Servais said. “The straight has some life, but there are a lot of cutters and a lot of curves. Thanks to him, he threw them early for strikes. We took a lot of them. Obviously guys come up looking for a fastball and they’re trying to stay on it, but we didn’t make the adjustments we needed midway through the game.”
When JP Crawford issued a leadoff walk in the first inning and then stole the second, it marked the first and only time the Mariners had a runner reach second base in the first eight innings.
Arrighetti came in with an 18.9% walk rate and hit a first-pitch strike to 60.5% of the batters he faced. The Mariners did not expect him to have precise command.
“We wanted to get on top of him early,” Dylan Moore said. “Trying to sweep these guys would have been huge. We had to make the adjustment pretty quickly for him to control all of his pitches and throw pretty well. We tried to make adjustments as best we could, but he was making pitches.”
But Moore would not limit himself to paying tribute to Arrighetti and his departure. The Mariners were equally at fault.
“That’s baseball and we have to make adjustments quicker,” he said. “We need better ABs in a row, keep it simple and score more than zero runs. “These are the big leagues and you have to make those adjustments on the fly.”
Gilbert took the loss to fall to 3-3. He pitched six innings, allowing four earned runs on eight hits with one walk and five strikeouts.
He worked the first three scoreless innings, allowing a double hit to Yordan Álvarez in the first inning for the only hit.
“After the first time in the lineup, the approach seemed a little different,” Gilbert said. “But some of that just comes down to execution, and then some of that is just putting the bat on a good pitch.”
The Astros broke a 0-0 tie in the fourth inning. Kyle Tucker, who had lined out to first in his previous at-bat, singled to center for his first hit of the four-game series. Later, with two outs, Alex Bregman managed to turn a low splitter into a low line drive that barely cleared the left field wall for his second home run of the series and a 2-0 lead.
“Yeah, it was a good pitch,” Gilbert said. “Good depth, good action, good placement on an 0-1 count, not even a two-strike count. Just a good hit. If you complain, we’re not talking about that; If he hits a home run, he excels. “I’m really not too upset with where that pitch was.”
Houston continued to add incrementally over the next two innings.
Victor Caratini led off the top of the fifth, ambushing a first-pitch fastball and sending it over the right-center field wall for a solo home run and a 3-0 lead.
The Astros extended the lead to 4-0 one inning later. Bregman hit a deep ball that center fielder Julio Rodríguez couldn’t catch despite a jumping attempt, crashing into the wall. The ball hit the padded wall and bounced far away from Rodriguez. Dominic Canzone walked up, picked up the ball and fired it into the infield. But Bregman hit a triple with one out. He scored when the Mariners failed to convert an inning-ending double play.
Down 4-0 after six innings, the Mariners were cooked.
Yes, they have been making quality plate appearances late in games. While overcoming a one- or two-run lead is difficult, trying to overcome a three- or four-run deficit is basically impossible.
In the bottom of the sixth, Arrighetti issued a leadoff walk to Josh Rojas. Could the Mariners start a comeback? No. He struck out Rodriguez, Cal Raleigh and Ty France, all swinging to close out his outing.
Relievers Rafael Montero and Ryan Pressly each worked 1-2-3 innings of relief. Working on consecutive days, Hader allowed one-out singles to Rodriguez and France, but came back to strike out Canzone and get Mitch Haniger to ground out for a force out.
The Mariners (31-27) saw their four-game winning streak come to an end. They scored a total of nine runs in the four games, had 21 hits and struck out 46 times. They have struck out in double figures 38 times. Seattle will host the Los Angeles Angels over the weekend.
“It happens, gang,” Servais said in his postgame media session after a long period of silence after answering two questions. “We just beat the Houston Astros three out of four. That’s a pretty good series. And we will continue to try to focus on winning the next series. That’s what happens in baseball: you don’t win every game. But we are playing better. We still have a long way to go offensively and we know it. You have to look forward to the weekend and score some runs.”
SCOREBOARD
Ryan Divish: rdivish@seattletimes.com; Ryan Divish covers the Mariners in Seattle and on the road. Look for his ‘Extra Innings’ podcast and mailbags throughout the season.
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