Mariners Noon Number: 4

Seattle Mariners reliever Emilio Pagan pitched four solid innings in Tuesday’s 10-1 loss to the Washington Nationals at Nationals Park.

Those four innings aren’t important in the final score of the game – that was taken care of by the eight runs the Nats put up in the fourth inning, and 10 overall, against starter Christian Bergman, who is either allergic to rain or the East Coast.

But when Pagan’s service did was allow manager Scott Servais to not tax his bullpen in the first of an eight-game road trip against Washington, Boston and Colorado, two first-place teams and a third with designs on a playoff spot.

This really is a critical eight- (now seven-) game stretch. The Mariners are now six games below .500 (20-26) and 11 games behind Houston (31-15) in the division. The M’s are an incredibly lousy 7-17 on the road.

If they continue to play that poorly on the road – and nothing in Tuesday’s rain-soaked affair leads us to believe they won’t – and they come home next Wednesday 10 games (or more) below .500 they might as well start exploring trade options on some of the more veteran players on the team.