Mariners fail to score in latest loss, 3-0 to Boston Red Sox

BOSTON – Not even one and done Friday night for the Mariners.

A zero.

Sure, the Mariners had other problems Friday night in a 3-0 loss to the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park. They gave away one run on a wild pitch and another on a passed ball. They committed two errors in the outfield.

But the growing concern is an unproductive lineup that, outside of one three-run swing Thursday by Nelson Cruz in Washington, has completely flatlined over the last week.

The Mariners, prior to their 4-2 victory Thursday over the Nationals, had scored exactly one run in five straight games and, not surprisingly, lost all five. On Friday, they didn’t even score one.

And they’re searching for answers.

“We have such a good team,” second baseman Robinson Cano insisted. “We’ve got guys who make a lot of contact. Guys who can hit. Guys who have been in this game a long time.

“I believe this is going to change. It’s going to turn around. We’re going to get really hot and win a lot of games.”

It didn’t look that way Friday on a chilly, wet night at the Fens.

Boston lefty Eduardo Rodríguez (4-1) breezed through six innings before handing a three-run lead to the bullpen. Heath Hembree, Matt Barnes and Craig Kimbel completed the shutout. Kimbrel got his 13th save.

“Offensively, we struggle to put innings together,” manager Scott Servais said. “That’s been the story here for the last week or so. We just have not gotten the line moving at all.

“It seems like we’re going to start to get something going, and we don’t get the big hit. We got one (Thursday), but we didn’t get one tonight.”

The Mariners (21-28) have lost 11 of their last 15.

Friday’s game shouldn’t have been close. Mariners starter Yovani Gallardo (2-5) spent 5 1/3 innings and 112 pitches limiting damage in heavy traffic. He gave up all three runs while allowing seven hits and issuing six walks.

“I definitely had to battle the whole night,” he said. “The command wasn’t consistent, but I made pitches when I had to.”

The Red Sox were 0-for-9 with runners in scoring position. If not for a two-run sixth inning, when they scored one run on a bases-loaded wild pitch and another on a bases-loaded passed ball, it’s a 1-0 game.

One would have been enough.

Hanley Ramirez’s leadoff double in the second inning turned into the game’s first run when the Red Sox followed it with two ground outs to the right side.

Gallardo avoided bigger trouble by stranding two runners later in the second inning and three more in the third. He then worked around two two-out singles in the fourth and stranded a runner at second in the fifth.

The escapability ended in the sixth.

Josh Rutledge led off with a single to deep short, although Jean Segura made it close with a great throw. Gallardo walked Jackie Bradley Jr., and the runners advanced on Christian Vazquez’s grounder to short.

A four-pitch walk to Devon Marrero, who entered the game with a .178 average, loaded the bases before Gallardo bounced a curve for run-scoring wild pitch.

“I got ahead,” he said, “and you don’t want to leave it out over the plate. I just yanked it a little too much.”

When Gallardo reloaded with bases with a walk to Mookie Betts, the Mariners went to the bullpen for Dan Altavilla, whose first-pitch fastball to Andrew Benintendi got through catcher Mike Zunino for a run-scoring passed ball.

“I blocked myself a little bit with my knee,” Zunino said. “The pitch had some good late life on it. I thought I had enough glove to get there, but I didn’t.”