Felix Hernandez solid, Mariners sharp in 8-3 win over Royals

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Unlike the night before, there was no flirtation with being no-hit and there was no getting shut out.

The Mariners’ hitters woke from their one-game slumber, roughing up an opposing starting pitcher who was primed to be hit around and giving their starter, Felix Hernandez, who produced a bounce-back outing of sorts, plenty of room to work in a drama-free 8-3 win over the Kansas City Royals on Tuesday night.

It was the fifth time this season that the Mariners scored five or more runs in a game. Not surprisingly, they are now 4-1 in those games.

“You look at how we are scoring runs without some guys in the lineup, we have still some guys that can handle the bat good,” shortstop Jean Segura said. “As a team, we are moving forward without them and just continue to battle.”

Segura led the offensive attack, going 3 for 5 with a single, a double, a triple, two RBIs and two runs. He stepped to the plate in the eighth inning for a chance at the cycle. All he needed was a home run, but instead he grounded to third.

“Yeah, I was trying,” he said. “But, you know, it’s hard to try and hit a home run. I’m normally not doing that.”

The Mariners (5-4) tallied nine hits with seven of the nine batters in the lineup notching hits. They also worked five walks in the game and had runners reach base in every inning but the third.

“Up and down the lineup, we created traffic,” manager Scott Servais said.

Seattle welcomed Royals starting pitcher Eric Skoglund back to real-game action, scoring five runs off him in 4 2/3 innings. While the lanky left-hander is obviously a talented prospect, the circumstances surrounding his first start of the 2018 season weren’t exactly a recipe for success.

As the Royals’ No. 5 starter coming out of spring, he hadn’t pitched in a real-game situation in 23 days. His last outing came on March 17 in a Cactus League game against the Rangers, when he tossed four innings. His scheduled start in an exhibition game on March 26 in Omaha was canceled because of inclement weather. Once the season began, Skoglund’s scheduled debut start was skipped because of a snow day on Easter Sunday that allowed the Royals to reconfigure their pitching.

“Skoglund hadn’t been out there in a while and he looked a little rusty,” Servais said.

It was evident when he hit Dee Gordon with the third pitch of the game to start his problems. Skoglund then looked flustered when Gordon promptly stole second and third off him. Gordon later scored easily on Mitch Haniger’s single to right.

In his second inning of work, Skoglund, again, hit the first batter he faced – Daniel Vogelbach. The Mariners capitalized with Segura plating two runs with a triple to deep left-center and Robinson Cano smacking a double off the wall in center to score Segura to make it 4-0.

In the fifth inning, Guillermo Heredia tied Nelson Cruz and Haniger for the team lead in homers (two), launching a ball over the wall in left field.

Hernandez came into the start looking to redeem himself after an awful performance in his previous outing in San Francisco, where he gave up eight runs and walked five batters in four innings.

“It was really important to me,” Hernandez said.

“We talked before the game about getting his curveball going and it did and everything fed off that,” Servais said.

Given the early run support, Hernandez knew he had a lead to work with and reined in his pitch count a little. The Royals got to him in the fourth after he had retired eight straight hitters. Mike Moustakas blasted a two-run homer into the fountains.

Seattle answered with three runs in the sixth for some insurance, highlighted by a two-run single to left-center from Kyle Seager that made it 8-2.

Injury updates

“What do we got today? We got injury updates,” Servais said before Tuesday’s game. “We’ve got a couple of guys on the DL. We’ve got Nelson Cruz, he’s got an ankle injury, he’s progressing nicely. He hit off the tee (Monday) and that went well. As we speak, he’s in the cage taking more swings. Check.

“Mike Zunino is feeling much, much better. He’s going out and playing a little catch today and he will hit in the cage off the tee and a little bit more tomorrow. Zunino is moving along nicely. Check.

“Ryon Healy was seen by Dr. (Edward) Khalfayan yesterday. It went better than expected. He’s out of his walking boot. He’s walking fine now. He hasn’t done any baseball activity, obviously. But he’s moving along very nicely. Check.

“Ben Gamel has been transferred (to Triple-A Tacoma). He’ll play in Fresno tonight. He continues to progress and is on track to hopefully join us this weekend on Friday.”

Servais forgot to say “Check” after Gamel, but then tossed in a “check, check” after saying Erasmo Ramirez was scheduled to pitch again on Thursday. He even said he had no injury update on announcer Dave Sims, who suffered a torn Achilles in Minnesota playing pickup basketball. Per his Facebook, Sims flew back to Seattle and is scheduled to undergo reattachment surgery on Thursday.

“Check, check,” he said with a laugh. “It’s kind of crazy. It is what it is and I’m trying to have a little fun with it, otherwise I’d be real sad. So we’ll go that way with it.”