Why Scott Servais is giving Mariners a pass after some recent sloppy play
HOUSTON — While the four-game series in Kansas City resulted in three straight victories after dropping the first game, Mariners manager Scott Servais also understood that his team was fortunate to come out with a series win.
Facing a pesky opponent in the Royals, the Mariners were uncharacteristically sloppy in the field and on the bases, making those victories much more difficult and requiring extra innings twice.
Going into a three-game series against the rival Astros, the Mariners couldn’t play at a similar level and expect to come out with victories, particularly at Minute Maid Park, which has been a cruel house the past four seasons.
“You’re going to hit certain parts of the season where maybe you make a few errors, physical errors or mental errors,” Servais said. “Thankful for us, we were able to overcome it. How do you overcome those things? You hit, you score a lot of runs. And we did do that.”
It’s a little easier to do that against a Royals pitching staff that ranked 28th in earned-run average at 5.21. The Mariners are facing an Astros staff that has the fourth-lowest ERA at 3.79.
“We understand it’s not going to be as easy to produce and score as many runs against this pitching staff,” Servais said. “We do need to play tighter baseball, make the plays defensively, run the bases much more heads-up than we have here recently. But it happens. We play so many games that you do get in those three- or four-games stretches where a couple of things start to go crazy and then everybody panics. It’s still the same team. We’ve got a good club. We’ve had a really good second half. We just need to keep it rolling.”
From July 1 through Thursday, the Mariners had a 27-13 record. During that 40-game span, they played only three teams that had a losing record at the time — Detroit, San Diego and Kansas City. They went 6-3 in those nine games. The other 31 games came against nine different teams with winning records at the time — the Angels have since fallen below .500 — with the Mariners going 21-10.
Seattle picked up a rare series win in Houston during that stretch, taking three of four games on July 6-9. The Mariners came into this series with a 5-2 record against Houston this season.
Of course, the Astros have yet to roll out full lineups against the Mariners in any game this season. Second baseman Jose Altuve, who was back in the leadoff spot Friday, has yet to play against Seattle this season due to injury. Dangerous slugger Yordan Alvarez had only played in three games. With outfielder Kyle Tucker scratched from Friday’s lineup due to illness, Houston has yet to use its best lineup versus the Mariners this season.
After the three-game series, the teams will meet one final time this season with a three-game set Sept. 25-27 at T-Mobile Park.