ST. PETERSBURG — The juxtaposition in execution, production, competitiveness, performance and resilience over the first two games at Tropicana Field has been so stark, so glaring.
If 100 casual fans were forced to watch both games without any background of the season’s results and asked which team had a better record or was in a better standing for the postseason, none could reasonably say the Mariners.
The Mariners produced all of the variables in their equation of defeat — yet another dismal showing at the plate filled with strikeouts, a subpar outing from the starting pitcher and a bullpen implosion late in the game — resulting in an 11-3 pasting by the Rays.
“We’re not playing good baseball right now,” manager Scott Servais said. “You need a few things to go your way and when we make mistakes or walk a few guys, it has come back to bite us. We’re just not playing great baseball right now. It happens over the course of the season.”
With Tuesday’s drubbing, Seattle has now lost every series on this three-city road trip from hell. The Mariners go into Wednesday afternoon’s series finale trying to avoid being swept for the first time this season.
“For a lot of us in this locker room, we’ve gone through this the last few years where we kind of understand that we’re gonna hit these stretches,” said first baseman Ty France. “You just lean on each other and use each other to get through it. It’s baseball. It’s hard, but you just gotta keep going. You look up and we still lead the division.”
For the moment.
The timing of this unavoidable stretch of bad baseball has come at the worst possible time with the Houston Astros and Texas Rangers playing much better.
When the Mariners opened the nine-game road trip with an 8-5 win over the Guardians, they had a 44-31 record and 10-game lead over both the Astros and Rangers, who were 33-40 at the time.
Since then, the Mariners have gone 1-6. Meanwhile, the Astros have won six games in a row and the Rangers have gone 4-2. Seattle’s lead over Houston is down to 4.5 games and their lead over Texas is at 6.5 games.
“It happens to every team,” Servais said. “Every team we’ve ever had here. Every team that’s in this game, you’re gonna have … eight, 10-game stretches where it gets a little tough and that’s just where we’re at right now.”
Indeed, the Mariners and their fan base aren’t used to these stretches coming when they are atop the division. In years past, these stretches have put them behind in the standings and they’ve had to fight their way back into it.
The Mariners’ start to the season was less than stellar. How did they get out of it?
“You believe in yourself and you believe in your guys,” Servais said. “You show up and play tomorrow. That’s what being a pro is about. It’s hard in this league. There’s not many teams that are gonna go through the whole year just sailing through it and everything’s great and everybody’s healthy and everybody’s fresh. No, we’re just in that stretch right now. And we’ve got a group of guys in there that will grind through it.”
Knowing the bullpen was taxed from usage this series and with several relievers unavailable to pitch, Luis Castillo tried to get the Mariners as many innings possible. He gave up homer to Yandy Diaz on his first pitch of the game and another run in a lengthy second inning.
When France tied the game at 2 with a two-run homer in the fifth, Castillo wanted to keep pushing to get through the sixth. But he couldn’t do it.
Castillo started the sixth having thrown 87 pitches and struggling to find any efficiency. He got Isaac Paredes to pop out to third for the first out. But his command started to dissipate. He walked Richie Palacios despite being up 1-2 in the count. His next three pitches were nowhere near the strike zone. He threw more competitive pitches to the free-swinging Jose Siri, but a 3-2 fastball leaked in off the plate for another walk.
With Castillo at 103 pitches, Servais had to go to the bullpen for a semi-fresh arm in the difficult situation.
Mike Baumann was called on to work out of the situation. The failure came on his first pitch — a 95-mph fastball. Left-handed hitting Taylor Walls yanked it into the right-field corner, just out of the reach of Dominic Canzone. It scored both runners with ease while Walls raced to third for a triple.
Both runs were charged to Castillo. His final line: 5 1/3 innings pitched, four runs allowed on five hits with four walks and four strikeouts.
In nine road starts this season, Castillo has a 2-6 record with a 4.58 ERA. In 51 innings pitched, he’s struck out 46 batters with 21 walks.
“This is a team that is very aggressive and we already knew that,” Castillo said through interpreter Freddy Llanos. “We saw it right from the get-go. You could tell that this team was just coming in going to be aggressive. But I think for me, the thing that I disliked about my performance was the walks. I think they really hurt the team.”
The inning continued to devolve quickly when the next batter, Ben Rortvedt, somehow got on top of a 95-mph fastball well above the strike zone. A pitch that was supposed to generate a swing and miss on a 1-2 count was deposited into the seats in right-center for a two-run homer and a 6-2 lead.
The Mariners cut into the lead when Mitch Garver hit a solo homer to left field in the seventh. He has homered in each of the games vs. Tampa.
Any scintilla of hope for a comeback was crushed in the bottom of the inning when Eduard Bazardo gave up three runs with some help from Cody Bolton.
The Rays tacked on two more runs in the eighth off Bolton on a two-run homer from Paredes.
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