Mariners Drop First Game of Critical Rangers Series

Every contest is an opportunity for a team to advance one game in the standings. The Mariners entered Friday night’s game having won 51 of those opportunities and lost 52 of them. They hadn’t given much indication at all that they could transform themselves into a competent, consistent squad during those 103 games, with every speck of momentum mired in a following slump, and with the team seemingly unwilling to impose themselves on the game.

At times, it appears that the team really wishes to turn things around. At others, they seem convinced that they can’t really control or influence what happens during a game. Skipper Dan Wilson didn’t touch upon the divisional implications of the loss, instead focusing on an offense that he saw as indicative of an upswing and a level of fight he admired.

“The score didn’t go our way tonight, but I thought we did a lot of good things offensively. We particularly really put a lot of pressure on it, a lot of pitches on. I thought they took their walks when we needed them, and able to get some hits and create a lot of traffic,” Wilson said. “I like the way they continue to fight back as they always do. Got behind after the solo shot, came back in it, got behind after the two-run shot, and were able to jump right back in it again. And they kept fighting ‘til the end.”

There is a difference between finding silver linings and blinding oneself to one’s own flaws. If that was the Mariners fighting, it goes a good ways to explain their season-long lethargy. It may have been one of the least close one-run games ever played, with the score only reaching 5-4 in the ninth because they lucked into a two-out wild pitch. Once they fell behind 5-3 in the bottom of the sixth, they had two total baserunners for the final three innings of the game.

This is flatly not how a contending team plays against a divisional opponent, let alone one that the world fancied as runaway division champions before the season. Their autopsy for Friday’s game has long since started to resemble an autopsy for the whole season, though as has held true the entire year, the other American League teams have been too busy immuring their own chances to take advantage of Seattle walling itself off.