Mariners swept in Philadelphia to wrap up miserable 2-7 East Coast trip

PHILADELPHIA – Nine games into this forgettable road trip, three games into this miserable series, Julio Rodríguez gave the Mariners their first lead against the Phillies with a solo home run in the top of the first inning Wednesday.

And thus concludes the highlight package of this Mariners recap.

The Mariners held the lead for merely a half inning over three games here, and it was only fitting that they wrapped up this four-city East Coast trip with a whimper and a flurry of whiffs in an 11-2 loss at Citizens Bank Park.

The Phillies (74-53), it seemed, barely broke a sweat in sweeping a Mariners club desperate to get back home to Seattle late Wednesday.

After beginning the trip with a victory in Baltimore to extend their winning streak to eight games, the Mariners (68-60) limp home having lost seven of their last eight.

No one has ever needed an off-day more than the Mariners do on Thursday.

“This game is tough. They’re a really good team and they beat us,” Rodríguez said. “But I feel like the key is how we respond as a team. It’s easy to go through a time when it’s easy, when everybody’s playing good and all that, but it’s, how do we respond the situation? Every team goes through things like that. It’s baseball. …

“We’re going to leave everything here and then we’re going to reset and play our game in Seattle.”

Luis Castillo labored through another truncated four-inning outing Wednesday to continue the Mariners’ starting pitching woes, and Jesús Luzardo struck out 12 to continue the Phillies’ starters’ dominance over the Mariners.

The Phillies put at least one runner in scoring position in every inning, and Castillo was fortunate to only surrender three runs in his four innings. His fastball velocity average 93.8 mph in the first inning – down from his season average of 95.1 mph – and the Phillies seemed to be on top of all his offerings.

Physically, Castillo said he felt fine.

“I’ve always said, it’s a long season and you’re not always going to come out and throw in your fastest,” he said via interpreter Freddy Llanos. “Sometimes you’re just going to have some of these days where maybe it’s a little slower.”

Rodríguez hit his 25th homer off Phillies lefty Jesús Luzardo in the first inning. Rodriguez golfed a slider that was a mere 8.5 inches off the ground, the second-lowest pitch hit for a home run by any player since the Statcast era began in 2008, per MLB.com.

Eugenio Suárez belted a solo homer – his third back with the Mariners and 39th overall this season – in the top of the seventh inning off David Robertson to pull the Mariners within 3-2.

But the Phillies quickly erased any momentum for the Mariners with five runs in the bottom of the seventh off Mariners lefty Tayler Saucedo, making just his third appearance since April.

Manager Dan Wilson had used Matt Brash, one of his best leverage arms, to get the M’s out of a jam in the sixth inning, and he did have his most effective lefty, Gabe Speier, warming up while Saucedo was working the seventh. But the call to Speier never came after Saucedo surrendered the first few runs.

Wilson’s bullpen usage has come into question several times on this road trip, and his decisions certainly didn’t work out Wednesday.

But it’s only fair to point out, too, that the ineffectiveness of the Mariners starters forced Wilson into some difficult choices, and he was going to have to count on at least one of Saucedo or rookie reliever Sauryn Lao for at least a couple outs at some point in this game.

“It’s always a challenge,” Wilson said. “ … Those are tough calls there and it seemed like (the Phillies) were able to add on just a little bit too much there (in the seventh) and we weren’t able to go (with Speier).”

Lao surrendered three more runs in the eighth, including Kyle Schwarber’s National League-leading 45th home run.

The Phillies finished with 48 hits in the three-game series.

“This has been a series where they swung the bat, and you’ve got to give them a little bit of credit,” Wilson said. “It seems like they hit some balls hard, but a lot of what they didn’t hit hard also found holes and just made it difficult. They just had a lot of traffic.”

In the nine-game road trip, Mariners starting pitchers produced just three quality starts, posting a 6.49 ERA (31 earned runs in 43 innings), with 10 home runs allowed.

The only good news for the Mariners is the Houston Astros have been just as putrid lately. The Mariners remain 1.5 games back in the AL West.

The Mariners begin a six-game homestand Friday against the Athletics.