Mariners can’t complete sweep of Astros as offense struggles again

SEATTLE – Whether they would admit it or not, and they certainly wouldn’t do it publicly, the Mariners’ starting pitchers have been conditioned to expect minimal run support when they take their respective turn on the mound.

It’s a mindset borne from experience and the empirical evidence of the Mariners providing an average of 3.2 runs per game when their starters are in the game – the third lowest in all of MLB.

It’s difficult to work when giving up two runs might be two runs too many. And allowing three or more, well, good luck with that.

So even if Logan Gilbert had dominated for six or seven innings and held the Astros scoreless Thursday, it wouldn’t have been good enough.

Why? His teammates were held without a run in a game for the third time this season.

Rookie Spencer Arrighetti delivered a dominant start for the Astros, limiting the Mariners to two hits over the first six innings, as Houston avoided being swept in the four-game series with a 4-0 victory.

“I said before the game it is really hard to sweep a four-game series and to do it you have to have all facets working,” M’s manager Scott Servais said. “Going into today’s game, we talked about needing to get out of the gate early and try to get some runs up on the board. That did not happen.”

It didn’t happen early or late or at any point in the middle.

The Mariners struggled in Thursday afternoon’s sunshine at T-Mobile Park. They tallied just two hits for the first eight innings and picked up two in the ninth inning off Astros closer Josh Hader. But only twice did they put a runner in scoring position. They struck out 12 times.

Arrighetti came into the game with a 2-5 record and a 6.93 ERA. He exited with a 3-5 record and a 5.98 ERA. Besides the six scoreless innings and the two hits allowed, he walked three batters and struck out nine. He got first-pitch strikes on 19 of the 24 batters he faced and had 14 whiffs on pitches.

“It’s a guy we had not seen before,” Servais said. “The fastball has got some life to it, but it’s a lot of cutters and a lot of curveballs. Credit to him, he threw them for strikes early. We took a lot of them. Obviously, guys go up looking for a fastball and are trying to stay on the fastball, but we didn’t make adjustments the way we needed to do midway through the game.”

When J.P. Crawford worked a leadoff walk in the first inning and later stole second, it represented the first and only time the Mariners got a runner to second base in the first eight innings.

Arrighetti came in with an 18.9% walk rate and getting the first pitch on 60.5% of the batters he faced. The Mariners weren’t expecting him to have pinpoint command.

“We wanted to get on top of him early,” M’s second baseman Dylan Moore said. “Trying to sweep these guys, it would’ve been huge. We had to make the adjustment pretty quick that he was controlling all this pitches and he was pitching pretty well. We tried to make the adjustment as best we could, but he was making pitches.”

But Moore wouldn’t just completely tip his cap to Arrighetti and his outing. The Mariners were just as at fault.

“That’s what baseball is and we’ve got to make adjustment quicker,” he said. “We need better ABs in a row, keep it simple and score more than zero runs. This is the big leagues and you have to make those adjustments on the fly.”

Gilbert took the loss to fall to 3-3. He pitched six innings, allowing four earned runs on eight hits with a walk and five strikeouts. He worked the first three inning scoreless, allowing a scalded double to Yordan Alvarez in the first inning for the only hit.

“After the first time through the lineup, the approach seemed a little different,” Gilbert said. “But some of it just comes down to execution and then some of it is them just putting the bat on a good pitch.”

The Astros broke a 0-0 tie in the fourth inning. Kyle Tucker, who had lined out to first in his previous at-bat, singled to center for his first hit in the four-game series. Later with two outs, Alex Bregman managed to turn a low splitter into a low line drive that just cleared the wall in left field for his second homer in the series and a 2-0 lead.

“Yeah, it was a good pitch,” Gilbert said. “Good depth, good action, good location in an 0-1 count, not even a two-strike count. Just a good hit. If he grounds out we’re not talking about it, if he hits a home run, it sticks out. I’m not really too upset with where that pitch was.”

Houston continued to add incrementally over the next two innings.

Victor Caratini led off the top of the fifth, ambushing a first-pitch fastball and sending it over the wall in right-center for a solo homer and a 3-0 lead.

The Astros pushed the lead to 4-0 an inning later. Bregman hit a deep drive that center fielder Julio Rodriguez couldn’t catch despite a leaping attempt, crashing into the wall. The ball hit off the padded wall and bounced well away from Rodriguez. Dominic Canzone came over and picked up the ball and fired it to the infield. But Bregman had a one-out triple, He scored when the Mariners couldn’t convert an inning-ending double play.

Down 4-0 after six innings, the Mariners were cooked.

Yes, they’ve been on a run of putting together quality plate appearances late in games. Though overcoming a one- or two-run lead is difficult, trying to come back from being down three or four runs is basically impossible.

In the bottom of the sixth, Arrighetti issued a leadoff walk to Josh Rojas. Could the Mariners start to mount a comeback? Nope. He struck out Rodriguez, Cal Raleigh and Ty France all swinging to close out his outing.

Relievers Rafael Montero and Ryan Pressly each worked 1-2-3 innings of relief. Working on back-to-back days, Hader gave up one-out singles to Rodriguez and France, but came back to strike out Canzone and get Mitch Haniger to ground into a force out.

The Mariners (31-27) saw their four-game winning streak come to an end. They scored a total of nine runs in the four games while tallying 21 hits and striking out 46 times. They’ve struck out in double digits 38 times. Seattle will host the Los Angeles Angels over the weekend.

“It happens gang,” Servais said in his postgame media session after an extended period of silence after answering two questions. “We just beat the Houston Astros three out of four. That’s a pretty good series. And we will continue to try to focus on winning the next series. That’s what happens in baseball, you don’t win every game. But we are playing better. There’s still a long ways to go for us offensively and we know that. You got to look forward to the weekend and score some runs.”