MARINERS COMMENTARY

SEATTLE – The parade of baserunners rounding the bases and eventually crossing home plate looked endless. The quest to record just one out, the final out of any sort, seemed impossible to achieve. The inning itself felt interminable and uncomfortable as the carnage continued and continued with Bryan Shaw trying everything and finding nothing to stop the hemorrhaging.

SEATTLE – Stop me if you’ve heard this one.

SEATTLE – It wasn’t quite the dominating outing that his fellow starters Marco Gonzales, Taijuan Walker or Yusei Kikuchi had produced in the previous nights, but Kendall Graveman, with his neck aching and his jersey and cap soaked with sweat from the effort, walked off the mound with two outs in the fifth inning having not allowed a run and his team leading by a run.

SEATTLE – This year was always going to feature some growing pains for the Seattle Mariners. The pandemic shortening the season to 60 games (or whatever they end up with) doesn’t do them any favors, baseball-wise (or financial), either.

When my editors asked if I wanted to drive over to Seattle to cover the Mariners' home opening series this weekend, I honestly had mixed emotions. Of course, I jumped at the chance. But it not without reservation.

There's an old adage that pitching and defense wins championships. While that may be true, you still have to score enough runs to win games. 

SEATTLE – The Mariners’ first dalliance with Major League Baseball’s new experiment for extra innings, using the international tiebreaker in which a runner starts at second base for each team in a tie game after the ninth inning, wasn’t executed as planned or expected, yielding a suboptimal result in a 3-2 loss to the Oakland A’s on Saturday.

Taijuan Walker threw one-hit ball over seven innings, Kyle Lewis had his sixth straight multi-hit game, and the Seattle Mariners beat the Oakland Athletics 5-3 on Friday night.

SEATTLE – Entering play on Friday, the Seattle Mariners had played seven games, but all were on the road in the unfriendly confines of Houston and Los Angeles – well, Anaheim, California, to be precise.

No need for Jose Marmolejos to worry about sliding this time.

SEATTLE – It could’ve been a disastrous situation for the Mariners. Instead, it should be just an issue for a few more days after some good news for catcher Austin Nola arrived Wednesday.