Mariners continue their stumble coming out off All-Star break, drop another to Twins
The losses in games and in series are starting to pile up.
And with each defeat in either regard, it only moves this team closer to being irrelevant in the final months of the season and dismantled at the looming Major League Baseball trade deadline.
A late-inning rally gave the Mariners a brief hope of pulling out a victory, but a costly mistake from their veteran catcher and misplaced changeup from a young right-hander pitching at the MLB level for the first time led to an eventual 6-3 loss to the Minnesota Twins.
The Mariners are 2-4 coming out of the All-Star break.
Brought in to pitch the eighth inning of a tie game, reliever Andres Munoz allowed a leadoff single to Max Kepler and a one-out single to Willi Castro that put runners on the corners with one out. He came back to strike out Kyle Farmer to set up a possible scoreless inning.
However, a 1-1 slider to pinch-hitter Donovan Solano stayed above the strike zone, and catcher Tom Murphy couldn’t grab the catchable pitch with the ball hitting off the top of his glove and going to the backstop. The passed ball allowed Max Kepler to race home with the go-ahead run.
The lead ballooned to three runs in the ninth inning when rookie right-hander Devin Sweet, who was called up from Double-A Arkansas and making his MLB debut, gave up a two-run homer to Alex Kirilloff.
Luis Castillo gave the Mariners a “quality start” by metric if not by expectation. He allowed three runs on six hits over six innings with two walks and 11 strikeouts. Was it his most dominant outing? No.
But realistically, even if Castillo had been slightly more efficient to work one more inning or made one less mistake to allow one run fewer, the Mariners still lose the game.
The first run allowed came in the second inning. A leadoff walk, which rarely ends well for a pitcher, started Castillo’s problems. The free pass to Matt Wallner turned into a run when he advanced to second on a one-out single by Kyle Farmer and then scored with two outs when Ryan Jeffers was able to sneak a ground ball up the middle through a modified shift for a 1-0 lead.
The Twins picked up a pair of runs in the fifth inning on solo homers from Edourd Julien and Max Kepler. Julien, who had six hits, including a homer and four runs scored, in the previous two games, smoked a 97-mph fastball over the wall in right field.
Castillo left a changeup to Kepler up in the zone and it was hammered into the seats in right for a 3-0 lead.
Meanwhile, the Mariners offense was doing basically nothing against Twins starter Kenta Maeda over that same span of five innings.
J.P. Crawford led off the game with a single to center and was quickly erased on two batters later Jarred Kelenic’s inning-ending double play.
After Crawford’s single, Maeda retired the next 15 hitters in a row. He did get some help with shortstop Carlos Correa making an impressive diving grab on Teoscar Hernandez’s hard line drive to left.
Murphy broke up Maeda’s string of consecutive batters retired with one out in the sixth inning. He ambushed a first-pitch slider, smashing a solo homer to left field. It was his sixth homer of the season and the Mariners’ second hit of the game.
Seattle was able to tie the game in the seventh inning after knocking Maeda out of the game. Jarred Kelenic’s hard single to right field with one out, ending Maeda’s outing at 80 pitches.
His replacement Griffin Jax got ahead quickly on Eugenio Suarez. But he left a 1-2 slider over the middle of the plate and Suarez hammered it into the Mariners’ bullpen for his 14th homer of the season.