Photo credit: (Kevin M. Cox/The Galveston County Daily News via AP
The Seattle Mariners offense has been on the missing persons report for about 5 games now. In a 3 game series against the Houston Astros, the bats were quiet as they dropped the True to the Blue to a 7-15 record keeping them in the cellar of the American League West. Houston continues to be a house of horrors as the M’s have only won once in the seven games at Minute Maid this season. A year ago they went 0-10 in Houston, while they were 2-7 in 2018. After a monumental disaster on Friday, the M’s did put together a couple of good efforts all for it to go for naught as the Astros would win all 3 games in the series.
8/14 @ Astros L 3-2
M’s starter Justus Sheffield would have his second nice start as a Mariner only to be betrayed by the bullpen. Sheffield went 6 innings allowing just 1 run. He wasn’t dominant allowing 6 hits, but he only allowed 1 walk and struck out 4.
But it would be a disastrous final pitch in the bottom of the 9th by reliever Eric Swanson to the Astros Kyle Tucker. After having struck out Jose Altuve, Swanson served up a meatball to Tucker who took a solo shot to right field for the walk off win.
“Certainly, a disappointing end to a well-pitched ballgame,” Seattle manager Scott Servais said via video call. “It was a disappointing series here. You come into the series and you lose a 2-1 game and a 3-2 game against this team and in this ballpark, you have to be disappointed you don’t win those games.”
8/15 @ Astros L 2-1
The Mariners squandered a strong effort by Nick Margevicius who went 6 innings of 2 run ball. The San Diego Padres castoff surprised many M’s fans who may had not heard of him, with his second start. The previous start was against Colorado where he went 3 1/3rd with no runs on 3 hits.
“Struggled to put anything together offensively,” Servais said of the Mariners’ lack of run support. “Marge set the tone on the mound tonight, really encouraged and like what we’ve seen out of him so far.”
Unfortunately, Astros rookie Cristian Javier owned the M’s. He would strike out 5 and retire 10 of the 1st 12 batters on the day.
8/16 @ Astros L 11-1
The Mariners struck first with a Kyle Seager sac fly to center to score Dylan Moore. It was all downhill from there. Mariner opener Nestor Cortes was shelled for 7 runs on 5 hits as he could not make it out of the 1st inning. Bryan Shaw allowed 2 more giving the Astros 9 runs in the 1st inning.
From there, it was mostly the M’s pitchers flailing at the plate and with the glove, with 3 errors. The only bright spot was when in the 9th inning the game ended. Had this been a rec league softball game, the game would have been called sooner by mercy rule.
“Obviously, not a lot of positives in that ballgame tonight, for sure,” Mariners manager Scott Servais said. “It was a struggle, finding out about an hour before game time that (the scheduled starter) was not going to be able to go.”
