Not-So-Sunny Philadelphia Welcomes Mariners in 12-7 Shellacking to Phillies
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. – The good news is that the Seattle Mariners scored seven runs on Monday night. The bad news was, well, almost everything else in a 12-7 loss in game one of a three game set against the Philadelphia Phillies.
Recently, it seems as though the Mariners have been Murphy’s Law: The Team. When the pitching is good, the hitting isn’t; when the hitting is good, the pitching isn’t. Sometimes, like during the Little League Classic, both were bad at the same time. But on Monday, the Mariners’ third loss in a row, a lot of stuff was going wrong simultaneously.
Logan Gets Annihilated
Let’s begin with the guy on the mound. Logan Gilbert did not have a good game, and that’s putting it charitably. Dan Wilson had to take him out after just two innings of work, as he had given up six runs on nine hits through the two frames. And it wasn’t just that the Phillies were getting lucky, either - Gilbert was leaving a whole lot of meat out over the plate.
The first inning was shaky enough, as Gilbert gave up two hits on some balls out over the plate before getting out of the inning. But instead of settling down in the second inning, everything found either the outfield grass or the grandstands.
Philadelphia’s first three batters that inning had an inside-out approach, each getting singles to put across the home side’s first run. Bryson Stott whacked a double for another and Trea Turner cleared everyone with a home run. In the blink of an eye, the Mariners trailed by five. Although Gilbert had the meager consolation prize of cleared bases and got the next two guys out, J.T. Realmuto torched one to add on the sixth run.
Of the 65 pitches Gilbert threw, 18 (27.7 percent) were over the heart of the plate (on the plate by more than 3.3 inches horizontally and four inches vertically), around his season average of 28.5 percent going into the game. But instead of batters whiffing at 15.7 percent of those pitches and giving up a hard hit ball (95 miles an hour or faster) 46.8 percent of the time, as is Gilbert’s season average, the Phillies whiffed just once on their 13 swings on those pitches (7.7 percent) and hit it above 95 miles per hour every single time they put a Gilbert heart-of-the-zone pitch in play.
Gilbert’s season average of 90.5 exit velocity against is already just 18th percentile league-wide, but the Phillies in total averaged a 95.8 exit velocity against him.
With Gilbert’s bad outing, Seattle’s starting pitchers have a 10.80 ERA in their past four starts - and that’s including Bryan Woo’s one-run, six-inning performance on Saturday. This is a team that is supposed to be built on run-prevention, but it seems that recently, their opponents haven’t been thrown off much by their pitch mix and just sit on that middle-middle mistake.
Carlos Vargas Prevents Bullpen Wipeout
The concern by this point in the game was not necessarily the loss. After all, the old adage goes that you will win a third of your games, lose another third, and it’s the third in the middle that counts. The concern was that Gilbert being knocked out so early would lead to the entire bullpen getting exhausted in a game that was already all but over.
With Tayler Saucedo having worked a heavy load on Sunday, Dan Wilson put Carlos Vargas out on the mound in the third for long relief. Vargas, who has looked quite solid in recent outings, proved an excellent fit for the role, going three innings and giving up no runs on three hits. Although Vargas did not strike anyone out, he didn’t walk anyone either, and the Phillies averaged just 83.7 miles an hour of exit velocity. This gave Seattle’s fielders more than enough of a chance to get to the batted balls and get Seattle through these innings.
With all attention on the future, the top end of Seattle’s bullpen will be in good shape for the rest of the series - and that’s largely thanks to Carlos Vargas efficiently working the early middle innings.
Garver, Young Scratch Back
It was the seventh inning before the Mariners did anything on the batting side. Philadelphia starter Ranger Suárez had been easily slicing through Seattle’s lineup for the first six innings, but with his pitch count rising by the seventh, he started to make mistakes.
Mitch Garver got it going with a sky-high two-out blast to center field. Although he came into the game with just a .655 OPS and isn’t a premier hitter in the lineup - his main role being a secondary catcher - there is a little bit of pop in his bat.
Suárez missed badly two pitches later, hitting Dominic Canzone, before J.P. Crawford blooped a single into left field. Cole Young cut the Philly lead in half with one swing as he got all wood on a ball on the lower inside corner. Although it was just his fourth home run of the season, he does have power, and it’s good to see that power start to show up.
The big upshot of that half inning was that even though the top of the order was largely silent, the bottom of the order was still able to put something together and bring a little energy back to the game.
Legumina Gets Annihilated
A 95.8 mile per hour average exit velocity is bad for a pitcher, but 100.8 miles an hour is far worse. That’s the average exit velocity the Phillies had off Casey Legumina on Monday. His first inning of work in the sixth wasn’t the best, but the only damage was to turn the Mariners’ six-run hole into a seven-run hole. Still, the Phils were mashing everything he threw, they just hit into some unlucky outs that first inning.
The seventh inning - when the Phillies’ lead had been reduced to three runs - was far worse for Legumina. It initially seemed as though he might get out of it still unscathed, with two of the first three batters flying out, but the wheels fell off the bus with two outs. Turner doubled to score the runner, Schwarber singled Turner home, and Bryce Harper hit the cover off a 1-1 changeup for a two-run homer. It was now 11-4 Philadelphia, and Seattle’s chances at a comeback were all but gone.
Ninth Inning Runs Go Nowhere
The Phillies scored another in the eighth off Jackson Kowar, as Wilson used all three available low-leverage relievers. But in the top of the ninth, the Mariners actually managed to get some more runs across. It was completely meaningless, but it was production nonetheless.
Nolan Hoffman, who was pitching the ninth in his major league debut, faced some struggles against a fair number of Mariners. Josh Naylor led off with a double, Garver knocked him in with a single, and an out later, J.P. Crawford cracked a double of his own. Garver scored on a Cole Young groundout and Crawford came home on a wild pitch.
But even with all of that, the M’s were still down 12-7. Hoffman ended the game on a big-moving curveball over the plate and under Cal Raleigh’s bat. It tends not to matter what your offense does when your opponent scores a dozen runs.
On Deck
Despite Seattle’s rough skid over the past few games, they are still just one and a half games out of the division lead in the AL West. But it’s getting interesting again in the wild card chase. The Mariners are tied with the Yankees for the second and third spots, but just three games out from Seattle are the Cleveland Guardians - and a half game back of Cleveland sits the Kansas City Royals.
The Mariners will have to end their rough stretch soon if they want to stave off a late-season battle for the final wild card spot, much less get back into the first wild card spot or any kind of division lead.
