> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.emeraldcityspectrum.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The Good, Bad, and Ugly For Mariners From Friday/Saturday Games vs. Athletics - URL: https://www.emeraldcityspectrum.com/the-good-bad-and-ugly-for-mariners-friday-saturday-games-athletics/ - Published: 2025-03-30T06:20:46.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-08T06:20:54.000Z - Author: Corbin Smith - Tags: Mariners, Ryan Bliss, Luis Castillo, Bryce Miller ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1d/f2/1df2f77b-83dd-4bc0-a6d2-6d1bb5df89a3/content/images/2026/10/449634374_1758036128058365_2298558518952718107_n-format-original-1.jpg) After an encouraging — if frustrating — season-opening win over the Athletics on Thursday, the Seattle Mariners’ next two games against their AL West rivals were not nearly as fruitful. They were blown out 7-0 Friday and fell to the A’s again 4-2 Saturday, guaranteeing that they won’t win the series, with the best outcome being a split with a win Sunday. Here’s a look at the good, the bad, and the ever-so-ugly over those two games: ### Good: The starting pitching It would be fair to say that neither Luis Castillo nor Bryce Miller were at their absolute best in their first starts of the year, but to say that both pitched well enough to win is an understatement. Castillo allowed just two runs over his five innings, and he shut out the A’s until allowing a two-run homer to Brent Rooker, one of the best power-hitters in the sport. His command wasn’t at his best and he didn’t have elite swing-and-miss stuff, but he initiated plenty of weak contact and kept the Mariners in the game. Miller put up a similiar line, going 5 2/3 innings while allowing three runs. His curveball looked fantastic, but the right-hander’s command betrayed him, as he also gave up a two-run homer in the fourth and an RBI single in the fifth. Again, neither starter was fantastic, but both kept the team in the game, and a competent offense — more on that in a second — would have seen Seattle win both games. ### Bad: The Friday Bullpen Castillo left Friday’s game with a 2-0 deficit. While Gregory Santos was able to get through his first inning of 2025 unscatched, the rest of the bullpen left a lot to be desired. Eduard Bazardo, Tayler Saucedo, and Carlos Vargas combined to give up five runs while striking out just one batter. It’s worth noting that these are not exactly the linchpins of the Seattle bullpen as you could easily argue they are arms 11, 12, and 13 of the 13-man pitching staff, but it’s fair to say that it was not an encouraging first appearance from any of those arms. The bullpen did look much better Saturday, as Collin Snider, Gabe Speier, and Eduardo Bazardo combined to throw 3 1/3 innings and allowed just an unearned run. Still, it wasn’t a great start overall for the team’s relief arms. ### Good: Ryan Bliss’s defense The Mariners have not gotten a lot of quality of defense from the second base position over the past few years. Bliss looks like he’s going to change that based on what we’ve seen over the first three games of 2025\. He has handled everything hit to him smoothly, and he’s shown impressive range, including an excellent play to his left that started a 4-6-3 double play. Bliss has also had some solid at-bats and made plays with his legs — outside of one bad slide into home plate in the opener — but the fact that he’s looked so solid with the glove has been my takeaway. That might be because I’ve become so used to being disappointed in defense from the keystone ever since the Robinson Cano trade. But either way, it’s good. ### Bad: Silly, avoidable mistakes The majority of the blame for these losses goes to what we’ll talk about in the next section, but there have been some gaffes that have reminded you that it’s early in the season, and that sometimes it feels like the sport of baseball hates the city of Seattle. With runners on first and second and the Mariners trailing 2-0 Friday, Dylan Moore blooped a baseball into center field for a base hit. The Mariners sent Mitch Garver from second, and JJ Bleday threw Garver out on a relatively close play at the plate. The decision to send Garver there made zero sense. First, it was a two-run game. The Mariners needed multiple runs to tie the contest (that’s how math works), so while drawing a run closer is certainly a positive, giving up a potential out there isn’t worth that risk. Secondly, Garver is one of the slower runners in baseball, ranking in the 17th percentile in sprint speed last year. Finally, JJ Bleday has one of the better arms in the American League, and ranked in the 93rd percentile in arm value according to Baseball Savant. All of that adds up to a mistake in process, and obviously result. Then on Saturday, Snider got Jacob Wilson to pop up just in front of the plate. Instead of Snider getting out of the way like pitchers are trained to do, he attempted to catch said pop up, bumped into Cal Raleigh, and Wilson ended up at second base. Two batters later, Brent Rooker hit a dribbler to third that scored Wilson and made the score 4-2\. Those mistakes aren’t the reason the Mariners lost the game, but obviously, neither play was ideal. The Seattle Mariners are simply not talented enough to give away runs like that, and they did it twice over the weekend. ### Ugly: The same offensive offense we saw in 2024 Yes, it’s only three games. Yes, it’s come against some decent pitching. Yes, T-Mobile Park is a tough place to hit. This offense has been atrocious, and that was particularly the case on Friday. Some credit goes to Jeffrey Springs, who is not long removed from being a top-of-the-rotation starter. A lot of that credit goes to an anemic effort from the Mariners’ lineup, who struck out nine times against Springs and 13 all together. The entire lineup disappointed — or lived up to expectations for those who have (understandable) doubts about this lineup. The word pathetic seems harsh for the second game of the season, but it’s hard to think it’s not an accurate description. And Saturday was not much better. The Mariners were able to score two more runs, which is an infinite improvement over Friday’s “production,” but the runs were just as much a product of poor defense from the A’s, if not more so. The first run scored on a horrible throw from Shea Langeliers on a steal attempt from Bliss that allowed Rowdy Tellez to coast into home plate, and the other came after a two-base error from Hogan Harris on a wretched pickoff attempt. Over the two losses, the Mariners scored two runs — only one earned, and the other run may become an unearned one if the scorekeeper knows what they’re doing — and struck out 25 times. You can tell me it’s early all you want. It’s far too reminiscent of the offense that we saw from Seattle in 2024, and it’s a far too unfriendly reminder of the floor of this group.