Good, Bad, and Ugly: Mariners’ Offense Goes Ice Cold in Consecutive Losses to Twins
Yuck.
After putting together a strong start to the road trip by winning four of their first five games, the Seattle Mariners were atrocious over their next two games, falling 2-0 to the Minnesota Twins on Wednesday and then getting trounced 10-1 by the Twins to end the series with a split.
As we are contractually obligated to do, let’s look at the good, bad, and ugly from those last two losses against Minnesota.
Good: George Kirby and Emerson Hancock
Honestly, Hancock probably belongs more in the “fine” category than good, but we’ll sandwich him in because there’s just not a lot of positives to talk about. Kirby fired six innings of one-run baseball, while Hancock gave up two runs in his five innings. Both pitchers did their jobs - Kirby did his job better than Hancock, to be clear - and both aren’t the reason the Mariners lost these two ball games to close out the series in Minnesota.
End of positives, unfortunately.
Ugly: Questionable Roster Construction
With the Mariners down 2-0 in the fifth and Brooks Lee coming to the plate, Dan Wilson made the decision to throw Zach Pop in the sixth. To use a bad pun, the Twins hopped on Pop. He allowed eight runs - seven earned -- in his inning of work, and he turned what was still a very close game into a blowout.
Now, does Pop deserve some blame for this performance? Of course. He was awful. He commanded nothing and was shellacked for a couple homers and lots of hard contact into the outfield. Does Dan Wilson deserve some blame for bringing in his worst reliever in what was at least high-leverage adjacent? Yep. That’s not who I would have pitched.
But I think a lot of this blame has to go with the roster construction. Ideally, there’s a second lefty in this bullpen who can get the job done to pitch to someone like Lee in that situation, but because of the ineffectiveness/injury to Tayler Saucedo and because Jerry Dipoto and the front office doesn’t seem to believe it’s as big of issue as I do, they don’t have one of those.
The Mariners need help in a few places. The bullpen is one of them.
Ugly: The Offense. Again. Twice.
Awful. And look, the Mariners scored a bunch of runs over the previous five games and were due for some regression. It’s still 18 innings of one-run baseball, and that one-run came because of an awful defensive play by the Twins with two outs in the bottom of the ninth in Thursday’s trouncing.
Some credit here has to go to Joe Ryan, as he pitched terrifically during Wednesday’s loss. But the Mariners made Simeon Woods Richardson - a well below-average pitcher - look like an ace Thursday while swinging through or just not making hard contact with pitches down the middle. Everyone here deserves blame. Julio Rodriguez. Cal Raleigh. J.P. Crawford. Randy Arozarena. Everyone.
We have seen the ceiling off this offense. The ceiling is pretty darn high. We have also seen the floor. The Mariners have to - HAVE to - lift that floor.
Ugly: Mariners Looked Disinterested Thursday
I’m not in the clubhouse. I will never be in the clubhouse. I am not able to read the minds of players. I will never be able to read the minds of players. I have no idea what went into the preparation of Thursday’s game. I will never have any idea of what went into the preparation of Thursday’s game.
Alright, those caveats out of the way? The Mariners looked like they weren’t motivated to play Thursday. And it’s worth pointing out that the game was delayed four and a half hours because of rain (by the way: If you play in the Midwest, you should be forced to have a roof). But that doesn’t excuse not looking interested. And this isn’t hindsight, it looked blatant to me that this team wasn’t ready to go, or if they were, they weren’t for very long.
The Mariners aren’t good enough to win baseball games they don’t seem interested in playing in. It sure seemed to me like they weren’t interested in playing this baseball game and gave a lethargic effort as a result.
