Good, Bad and Ugly: Mariners Turn in Another Awful Offensive Outing in 3-2 Home Loss to Orioles
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
The Seattle Mariners guaranteed a losing homestand with their 3-2 loss to the Baltimore Orioles on Wednesday, and also guaranteed a series loss to Baltimore with the defeat.
As we always do, let’s take a look at the good, bad and ugly from Wednesday’s loss at T-Mobile Park:
Good: Emerson Hancock
This may have been the best start of Hancock’s career. He worked 5 2/3 innings while allowing just one run, and he struck out six against one walk, pitching with great efficiency. The right-hander made just one mistake on a hanging breaking-ball to Adley Rutschman in the sixth, but unfortunately, that tied the game at 1-1 without much run support. He was able to generate a respectable eight swings-and-misses among his 89 pitches, and 58-of-89 pitches landed for strikes.
Hancock continues to look like a solid backend starter for the overwhelming majority of the season, and at least during Wednesday’s outing, he looked better than that.
Good: Nothing else
Nope. This is gonna be a short one.
Ugly: It Might be 2024 Again
The best hitters on the Mariners were mostly fine. J.P. Crawford drew a pair of walks, and Cal Raleigh, Julio Rodriguez, and Randy Arozarena combined to go 5-for-11 with both RBI. It’s worth nothing, however, that Raleigh and Rodriguez both were unable to get the job done in high-leverage situations that could have either extended or given Seattle a lead.
But those four were fine. The rest of this offense was absolutely horrendous. Not a single hitter outside those names above were able to pick up a hit, and they struck out 11 times against pitchers that all have an ERA of 4.38 or worse until Felix Bautista in the ninth.
No one would be happier to be wrong, but as the kids would say, “it’s giving 2024 vibes.” The starting pitching appears to be right back on track - for the most part - but the impressive offense that was seen from the middle of April to around the middle of May is gone. Jorge Polanco has become a detriment in a hurry, and when Big Dumper or J-Rod aren’t getting the job done, the rest of this lineup is just flat-out not good enough to make up for it.
There’s time to fix it. There’s time for guys to get right. There’s time for a lot of things. But no one should be admonished for being concerned by what we have seen from this ballclub over the last couple of weeks. There’s too much of a track record of this being a scuffling unit in terms of actually getting runs across the plate to not be at least a little bit worried heading into the dog days of summer.
