Bullpen turns a close game into a thumping as Mariners’ losing streak hits six after loss to Rays

SEATTLE – They can say it’s early, because, well, the 2022 season is still in its infancy. But what happens if they are still playing subpar baseball like this and it’s no longer early?

The Mariners are officially 30 days and 28 games into this six-month, 162-game journey.

Over the past two weeks, it’s difficult to tell if they are a good team playing poorly, an average team regressing to a new norm or a flawed team revealing its warts with each game.

But this much is certain. They are mired in an abysmal stretch of losses with no easy wins coming on their schedule.

Asked to keep a game close in hopes of a late rally, reliever Diego Castillo provided a truly shaky performance .

Facing the team that traded him to the Mariners, Castillo gave up five runs on three hits, including a grand slam to Manuel Margot, while never recording an out in the eighth inning.

It turned a workable two-run deficit into an eventual 8-2 drubbing, extending the Mariners’ losing streak to six games.

The Mariners have lost 10 of their past 11 games to fall to 12-16.

It might be too early to panic. But the expectations of a winning season, a playoff berth and ending a postseason drought that started in 2002, well, that isn’t going to happen if they can’t find something better than what they’ve shown recently.

Making his sixth start of the season, Marco Gonzales gave the Mariners a workable outing, pitching 5⅓ innings, allowing three runs (two earned) on six hits with an uncharacteristic four walks and a strikeout.

The Rays picked up that earned run in the third for a 1-0 lead when Adam Frazier’s relay throw to third base struck the heel of Yandy Diaz as he was sliding into the bag. It bounced past Eugenio Suarez and into the dugout, allowing Diaz to jog home.

The other two runs came off the bat of Brandon Lowe. The left-handed swinging second baseman ended a career-long home run drought of 79 plate appearances over 19 games with a solo homer off a Gonzales change-up in the fourth inning to make it 2-0.

The Mariners got a run back in the fifth inning when Julio Rodriguez led off with triple and later scored on Adam Frazier’s two-out single to right field.

Lowe got Gonzales again sixth inning, ambushing a first pitch sinker and smoking a solo homer over the wall in right-center that made it 3-1.