The Good, Bad, and Ugly: Inconsistency, Questionable Decisions Hurts Mariners in Losses to Giants
Maybe you were hoping that the Seattle Mariners getting away from T-Mobile Park would give the ball club a chance to get going after a disappointing homestand against the Athletics and Tigers.
The San Francisco Giants had other plans, however. The Mariners lost each of the first two games against the Giants over the weekend to fall to 3-6 on the season, and guarantee another series that won’t be won.
Here’s a look at the good, bad and ugly from those first two losses in San Francisco.
Good: The best offensive game of the season
Some will argue this is darning with faint praise, but whatever way you look at it, it’s the truth. On Friday, the Mariners were able to put up a nine-spot, easily their top offensive game of the 2025 campaign. Yes, it came against a 42-year old Justin Verlander, who did not look the part of an ace while going only 2 1/3 innings, but beggars won’t be choosers. Julio Rodriguez connected on his second homer of the season while picking up three hits and a walk, and it’s great to see him driving the baseball to begin 2025 after not picking up his second homer of 2024 until Mother’s Day last year.
Jorge Polanco also had another huge game at the plate with a two-run homer and four RBI, and looks so much better at the plate than he did for the overwhelming majority of his first season with the Mariners. Those two were the stars, but it’s a night where the Mariners were able to pick up 15 hits, seven walks and struck out “just” eight times. At the very least, there have been a couple of outings that have shown the ceiling of this offense.
Ugly: It Wasn’t Enough to Win
The Mariners — and every other baseball team — are not going to lose many games when they score nine runs. They did Friday, however, as the pitching laid easily its biggest egg of the season while giving up 10 runs in the extra-innings defeat.
The decision to start Luis F. Castillo was a perplexing one, and the results matched the process. He was far from a disaster, but the 30-year old certainly wasn’t effective with three innings of three-run baseball, and it could have easily been more if the GIants would have not just-missed on some pitches in the middle of the plate. Seattle hasn’t optioned the right-handed hurler to Tacoma yet, but fans would have every right to be confused — and honestly, a little irked — if the "other” Castillo were to start another game.
And unfortunately, the struggles caused the Mariners to go to the bullpen early, and those arms were not up to snuff. Tayler Saucedo struggled again while giving up a pair of runs, and he’s been sent to Tacoma to hopefully find his form from the previous two seasons. Eduard Bazardo and Collin Snider weren’t much better, and they helped ruin what should have been a victory for Seattle if they get their usual pitching performances. The logic behind what they did Friday will be discussed, but the results were terrible.
Good: This Bunny Rabbit
Look I’m not going to lie to you: Finding good from these two games is hard. But I did find this massive therapy bunny rabbit while watching the game on the Giants’ stream, and I’m glad the internet found it.
[image or embed]— Mike Axisa (@mikeaxisa.bsky.social) April 5, 2025 at 7:57 PM
I won’t get out to T-Mobile Park often, but when I do, I sure hope I see a giant bunny wearing a baseball hat.
Bad: Bryce Miller
Calling Bryce Miller bad may seem a bit harsh, so if you wanted to go with “not good enough” I wouldn’t fight with you. Miller went 5 1/3 innings and allowed four runs with four strikeouts and three strikeouts. The first three frames were solid, but Miller lost his command over the final two-plus frames while giving up a pair of runs in the fourth and two more in the sixth. The right-hander’s stuff looked fine again in the loss, but the ability to locate that stuff was off-and-on at best Saturday, and he threw just 53-of-93 pitches for strikes.
There’s zero reason to have anything but optimism with Miller for the remainder of 2025, but at least on Saturday — and parts of his previous start — he wasn’t good enough. Especially because…
Ugly: Another Poor Offensive Performance Saturday
As someone dumb enough to recap every single Mariner game on YouTube for the past two seasons, I have noticed a pattern. When the Mariners have put together a big offensive game — few and far between though they may be — they have a tendency to follow that game with a clunker.
The clunker came Saturday. They scored all of one run against the Giants on Saturday, and rarely challenged the Giants’ pitching staff even while drawing six walks. Five of those were off former Mariner Robbie Ray, and while free passes are considerably better than outs (obvious point is obvious), they don’t mean as much when the runner is stranded at first base. Over and over again. The middle of the order was particularly bad, as Rodriguez, Cal Raleigh, Randy Arozarena and Mtich Garver accumulated just a single hit in the contest. It’s worth noting that they once again didn’t pile up the strikeouts with only five, but there was very little hard contact and they didn’t even kind of take advantage of Ray’s shaky command.
Yes, we’ve played all of 1/18th of a season so far and there’s plenty of time to fix it. But you not only see the ceiling of Friday, you see the floor from Saturday. We’ve seen the floor far too many times already in 2025.
Ugly: Sacrificing a Win
There were justifications offered for the decision to start Castillo on Friday. They wanted to give Miller and Bryan Woo — with Woo starting Sunday’s series finale — an extra day of rest. Castillo was on regular schedule. It allowed the Mariners to have Gilbert and Castillo to start the first two games of the series against the Astros beginning Monday.
But this was a decision that irked me. It irked me before the game, and it irked me after. Castillo simply doesn’t have the stuff to be an MLB starting pitcher, and as started in his section, there was no way he was going to be effective multiple times through a solid — if unspectacular — San Francisco lineup. If Miller starts on regular rest and pitches at his usual level, or even at the level he pitched at Saturday, the Mariners almost assuredly win Friday’s game. I’m all for protecting arms, but there should have better plans than starting Castillo if you wanted to give Miller and Woo a rest. And, it’s worth pointing out that both had already gained an extra day because of the off day Thursday.
And it wasn’t the only decision that was made Friday that suggested Friday wasn’t deemed important — correctly or not. The Mariners had Andres Munoz pitch the 10th inning of Friday’s game, and he was able to get through it unscatched while throwing 18 pitches. Rather than throwing Munoz for another inning, the Mariners decided to have Carlos Vargas pitch the 11th inning to protect a 9-8 lead. You know how it went.
Again, I understand the decision to protect Munoz. The Mariners overworked him last year and he wasn’t the same pitcher at the end of the 2024 campaign. But after 18 pitches? When you have a chance to win the first game of a series? Does this mean you’re never going to use Munoz in multi-inning situations, or at the very least not in the early part of the season? Is this bullpen good enough based on what we’ve seen for him to just be a one-inning hurler?
To me — and I cannot emphasize enough that this is just my humble opinion — the Mariners sacrificed a win Friday. We’ll see if it was worth it or not, but both the decision to start Castillo and not use Munoz for two innings are ones that I will be looking back on. Probably not fondly, either.
