Mariners open critical road trip with underwhelming loss to Yankees

NEW YORK – It’s not that Michael Rucker was in the game, though he hasn’t had the best success in higher-leverage situations this season.

It’s that Rucker remained in the game as he struggled to find the strike zone and keep runners off base until it was too late for the Mariners to stop the deluge. Seattle’s one-run lead devolved into a three-run deficit and it eventually resulted in a 4-1 loss to the Yankees at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday.

The Mariners fell to 56-64 on the season and have now lost five straight games and six of their last seven. It was a suboptimal start to a seminal road trip.

“Tough one again tonight,” manager Dan Wilson said. “We’ve just got to get it done, and we’ve got to start now. We have to push this one aside and get back after it tomorrow and start a streak tomorrow.”

It’s not the first time Wilson has said any of those sentences. But the results haven’t followed.

The players have also made similar statements over the course of this season of underachievement. They know the words remain hollow without following through. But they still believe there is fight left in them.

“Yeah, it’s easier said than done,” said starter Bryan Woo. “It’s been tough. You never want to not be playing your best baseball at this time of year. It’s the right mentality. You have an opportunity, you have games in front of you, and you just can’t give up. You’ve got to keep fighting, and you’ve got to keep believing in the possibility, and believe in the guys next to you. I believe in the locker room, believe in the group, because we’ve got the people. We’ve got the players. The character in that room is really high. So, it’s just continuing to believe and keep fighting.”

The Mariners squandered Woo’s best road outing of the season. Woo grinded through five scoreless innings, allowing three hits with a walk and five strikeouts. He did so despite a 32-pitch first inning.

“They made a lot of tough at-bats with a lot of foul balls,” Woo said. “Some not-so-great execution, but I settled in a little bit.”

In a pillow fight between two of the worst offenses since the All-Star break, the Mariners’ bullpen helped the Yankees find some hits and runs.

Meanwhile, the Mariners offense remained more rotten than a sublevel Bronx subway station, mustering just three hits on the night – infield singles from Brendan Donovan and Dom Canzone, and a solo homer from Randy Arozarena.

But the game changed in that seventh inning when Rucker was brought in to protect the 1-0 lead provided by Arozarena’s opposite-field blast in the top of the sixth.

A quick check of the scorecard revealed two left-handed batters – Luis Garcia Jr. and Jazz Chisholm Jr. – were scheduled to hit in the first two plate appearances. With Jose A. Ferrer having thrown a scoreless frame in the sixth inning, it seemed like a good spot for lefty Gabe Speier, who was coming off suspension. But Speier was not available to pitch.

“Gabe was down tonight,” manager Dan Wilson said. “He had a little bit of back soreness, and we’re hoping we get him back tomorrow. We like the way Ruck matched up there with those lefties.”

Did he consider bringing Ferrer back since he’d only thrown 16 pitches in the previous inning?

“Those are the tough decisions that you have to make and we decided to go with Ruck.”

Ideally, the Mariners hoped Rucker could cover the seventh leaving some form of Eduard Bazardo, who has also struggled of late, and Seranthony Domingez to cover the eighth with Andres Muñoz for the ninth.

That plan didn’t happen.

Rucker allowed a leadoff double to Garcia and Chisholm followed with a single to put the tying and go-ahead runs on base immediately. He came back to strike out George Lombard Jr. but walked Spencer Jones to load the bases.

Wilson had both Bazardo and Dominguez up after the Chisholm single but stayed with Rucker.

After a meeting on the mound with catcher Cal Raleigh and the infielders, Rucker allowed a single to Ryan McMahon, who stayed on a 2-1 curveball below the zone to produce a ground ball through the left side of the infield that scored two runs.

Wilson finally lifted Rucker and brought in Bazardo to try and limit the damage to two runs.

The Mariners didn’t help Bazardo, failing to catch Austin Wells’ pop-up to shallow right field. Taylor Ward got a late jump from his spot in deep right and Cole Young couldn’t quite make a play on the ball behind him. It landed for a single.

With the bases loaded again, Trent Grisham sent a ground ball into left field past the shifted infield for a two-run single and a 4-1 lead. Meanwhile, Dominguez pitched in mop-up duty in the ninth, throwing a scoreless frame with one walk.

“We were looking at a lot of different scenarios,” Wilson said. “We also had to look at the eighth as well. It just didn’t go our way.”

Not much has gone the Mariners way of late, but some of it is earned. They haven’t played a complete game of quality baseball in quite a while.

Since scoring one run over the first six innings was difficult, scoring three runs in the final two innings to extend the game was an impossibility.