Lawrence Butler Walks Mariners Off, Engulfs Last M’s Playoff Hopes

For years, the Mariners have relied on an ability to churn out relievers for pennies on the dollar, filling out a bullpen with just enough arms that are viable in a given year for the team to manage the innings required of a strong starting staff.

But the lack of relatively surefire options made the M’s weak to the impacts of a serious amount of injuries. The team lost Matt Brash, Cooper Criswell, and Carlos Vargas for extended periods of time, and the strain hence put on Eduard Bazardo and Jose Ferrer has turned what started as great seasons for both of them into second half catastrophes. The buck has thus fallen to lesser arms who have only inconsistently held up the bullpen’s standards, and with Sunday’s 8-7 loss, the final fruits of this were borne out in full.

The final deciding blow may have been Lawrence Butler’s walk-off two-run homer, but the fulcrum point of the game was the seventh inning. Had Carlos Vargas, who had already pitched a frame, managed to get one of the first two batters out, the A’s wouldn’t have approached Seattle’s tally. Had Gabe Speier, whose effectiveness as a reliever had been closer to his then-4.22 fielding independent pitching (FIP) and 4.36 expected FIP (xFIP) than his then-2.61 ERA, put out the fire with runners on, the A’s would have been down by three when the ninth began. And had Seranthony Domínguez either let Shea Langeliers’ grounder go to second or made a clean grab on the ball, a one-run lead would have continued apace.

“They’re all tough,” said Mariners manager Dan Wilson after the media pre-empted his usual “tough one” stock phrase. 

This late in the season, and with more smoke than ever that this will be Wilson’s last as the M’s skipper, that phrase has ascended from being a verbal display of a manager going through the motions and become something of a meme, in both the Dawkinsian and Millennial senses of the word.

It’s tough because it’s a loss. It’s tough because of how avoidable this loss was. It’s tough because it is the final reminder that the Mariners did not do enough, whether in terms of the owners or the front office or the players themselves, to avenge their fallen selves from a year prior. And it’s tough because that word might be the only one given by the other 29 teams to Seattle’s self-sabotage.

Tough.