Mariners lose series to Braves after offensive struggles return

ATLANTA — A road trip that started with plenty of promise, fueling ambitious intentions of righting some of the early wrongs of this season, ended with yet another lethargic offensive performance, which has happened for too often this season.

The Mariners wasted yet another strong outing from a starting pitcher — this time it was George Kirby getting the King’s (Felix) treatment — by mustering a total of three hits in the game, going hitless in five at-bats with a runner in scoring position and striking out 12 times in a 3-2 loss to the Atlanta Braves.

“It’s time to go home,” manager Scott Servais said quietly. “Obviously, we didn’t do enough offensively again today.”

Really, they haven’t done enough offensively this season.

They are 5-16 when scoring three runs or fewer and 4-12 in one-run games. It was the 10th time this season where they were held to two runs or fewer and 21st time they’ve struck out more than 10 times.

For every game where they display a mature and discerning approach as a collective group, producing runs and extra basehits, producing a win, they’ve had three games where they’ve slogged their way through plate appearances, swung at anything thrown in the vicinity of them and missed badly at most.

It’s a shared failure.

“You’re hoping to end this road trip on a real positive note,” Servais said. “And we did some positive things on the trip, but again, not enough offensively to get it done.”

After taking two of three from the Tigers to start the nine-game road trip, the Mariners dropped a three-game series to the Red Sox when Luis Castillo and Marco Gonzales struggled and Kirby dominated. After a better offensive showing in Saturday’s win, Seattle had a legitimate belief it could steal the series vs. the best team in the National League because Kirby, their most consistent starter, was on the mound in the finale.

Kirby pitched seven innings, allowing three runs on six hits with a walk and six strikeouts. It was Kirby’s eight consecutive quality start (six-plus innings pitched, three runs or fewer allowed). And the fourth time in five games where he pitched at least seven complete innings.

“Awesome outing by George, again,” Servais said. “The type of season he is putting together has been pretty remarkable and fun to watch. Just seeing him grow, he gets better every time out.”

Following a frustrating pattern in the series, the duo of Ronald Acuna and Matt Olson gave the Braves an early lead.

For the third straight game against the Mariners, Acuna led off the game with a hit — this time a looping single to left-center on 2-2 curveball. And similar to the previous two games, Olson scored him with a hit. The big lefty slugger yanked a first-pitch curveball into the right field corner that allowed Acuna to score from first base for a 1-0 lead.

“Just trying to pound the zone like I usually do,” he said. “I wish I could have got a couple of those back in the first inning. They’ve been super aggressive all week.”

The Mariners erased the one-run deficit immediately. Facing rookie lefty Jared Shuster, who was rated as the Braves No. 1 prospect but had struggled in his first few outings, Jarred Kelenic tied the game with a solo homer to right. It was Kelenic’s ninth homer of the season.

But a rare walk issued by Kirby helped give the lead back to Atlanta. A one-out walk to Olson left him shaking his head. He came back to strike out Austin Riley. It looked like he had the third out of the inning when Travis D’Arnaud looped a fly ball into right field. Teoscar Herandez hesitated slightly and wasn’t able to make a play on catching it, putting runners on the corners.

Kirby got up 0-2 on Eddie Rosario and fired a changeup off the plate to see if he’d chase. Instead, Rosario reached across the plate and got enough barrel on the pitch, to punch it up the middle for a RBI single.

The Mariners cut the lead to one run when Jose Caballero hit his first career homer in the eighth inning off reliever Nick Anderson.

But closer Raisel Iglesias worked a scoreless ninth, getting Julio Rodriguez to ground out and then striking out Kelenic and Eugenio Suarez to end the game.