The Mariners have been bad for much of their history, and fans don’t have much experience with things going well early in the season. Mariners fans are the ones most accustomed to season-long misery; the last few years have taught them to suffer through early-season misery only to see the team come alive down the stretch, only to miss the playoffs by a few agonizing games (and, in a brief moment of beauty, make the playoffs). This is a whole new kind of misery: watching the team sprint to an early-season lead, then slowly, agonizingly, squander it. Tonight, a larger-than-average crowd of 36,173 on Tuesday night—though that number was certainly inflated by several orange-clad fans in the park tonight—let the Mariners know how done with it they are.
The targets of the anger shifted as the offense sped along. For a time, a contingent of fans were very vocal, very angry at Mitch Garver, until he seemed to have managed to turn the tables. Tonight, the anger was directed directly at Jorge Polanco, who hit an inning-ending double play on the first pitch he saw in the fourth inning, as the Mariners finally got some traffic against Orioles starter Grayson Rodriguez in the form of a pair of walks. The boos followed Polanco as he struck out again in the seventh inning, his second strikeout of the day, and were also heard when he failed to make plays at second base, no matter how far out of his reach it was.
It was Polanco who had the misfortune of becoming the target of the fans’ ire over this team’s offensive ineptitude, a problem that has been simmering since the beginning of the season but has come to a head in recent weeks due to a bad streak that has seen the Mariners lose four straight series and now find themselves in a tough spot trying to break that streak. To be fair, Polanco isn’t the sole problem: The Mariners had two hits in the entire game, and both came from Josh Rojas, who was replaced in the eighth inning, if that rings a bell.
That lack of offensive production spoiled another great night from George Kirby, an unlucky loser who pitched better than his last two-run earned-run line: The second run came on a series of unfortunate events where the Orioles sent his curveball exactly where the infielders weren’t (despite the crowd’s boos at Polanco as he watched balls with 50-mph exit speeds roll past him within seven feet of his reach). Overall, though, Kirby has to be pleased with how he pitched tonight; the Orioles had the same plan of attack against him, strike early and often, but Kirby’s stance was so impeccable that those swings resulted in a lot of weak hits and easy flyouts, silencing the Orioles’ noisy bats.
“I just look at my last game against them, they hit the ball incredibly hard, so my job today was to get inside of them and throw that ball low,” Kirby said after the game, saying his execution and location had improved since his last forgettable outing against the Orioles. “Just had to keep them off balance. I thought I did a good job of that today.”
The bullpen was also flawless in its performance: groundball king Collin Snider worked around an unlucky leadoff double to record a scoreless inning in the eighth, and former Oriole Mike Baumann pitched a scoreless ninth inning (with help from Cal Raleigh, who caught Colton Cowser, who had walked a base he had already tried to steal three times in the at-bat but returned to first base on fly balls). Austin Voth had perhaps the toughest assignment of the night, coming on in relief of Kirby in the seventh inning with runners on the corners and only one out. Voth walked the first batter he saw, nine-hole hitter Jorge Mateo, leaving him to fend for the top of the lineup with the bases loaded and only one out. Counting heavily on Gunnar Henderson and Adley Rutschman, Voth got out of the trap, retiring Henderson on a nasty backdoor slider and forcing Rutschman to ground out harmlessly on the same pitch.
But no matter how good the pitchers were, the offense gave them absolutely nothing to work with. Yennier Cano didn’t help Rodriguez after Canzone drew a one-out walk in the seventh inning; Julio grounded into a fielder’s choice and Mitch Haniger struck out three times (despite his abysmal numbers this season, Haniger’s status as a beloved Mariner shields him from the most intense booing, but not always, as was seen tonight, when a trail of boos followed him to the dugout). After the Mariners lost 1-2-3 again in the eighth inning to Cionel Perez, the booing was more pronounced and fans rushed for the exits. In a 2-0 game. For a first-place team. It’s a pretty damning indictment of what fans think of this team’s offense right now.
The Mariners had another chance to make the game fun in the ninth inning. Luke Raley, who wreaks havoc wherever he goes, started off by getting hit by a pitch, bringing in Cal Raleigh, who almost had another magical moment… but fired the ball just right of the foul pole before getting tagged out. So close to a tie, and maybe a different story.
“Maybe tomorrow the ball will stay in the game and we’ll be in a good position. But that’s what happens over the course of a long season. We’re in a bit of a bind right now because we don’t have that luck, but it’s going to turn around,” Servais said. “It always does.”
For a moment, it looked like the game was going to turn around at this point in the ninth inning. Kimbrel then hit Polanco with a pitch before the crowd could even start booing, putting two runners on for Canzone with just one out. Let’s take a quick look at Canzone’s numbers in different leverage situations:
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That number didn’t improve tonight, as Canzone chased down the second pitch of the game, a curveball well below the zone, and was saved by a game-ending double play by Ryan Bliss’ speed. That only allowed Julio to become the Mariners’ 11th strikeout tonight, however, as he chased down a fastball well outside the zone and set off a series of boos from other Mariners fans that were simply drowned out by the cheers of the Orioles faithful, enjoying their trip to Seattle and our beautiful, non-humid weather.
“They’re putting a little pressure on right now,” Servais said of his offense. “They all want to be that guy, to hit hard, to make something happen when you look up there and you can put a big, twisty number up there.”
“We’ll eventually make the big shot. We’ll break through and we’ll do it again,” he added, acknowledging that the Mariners once again failed to capitalize on the (few) opportunities they had tonight while praising the team for putting pressure on the pitcher. It’s a compelling idea, and it’s not something that should be too far off if this team simply plays the way it has a good chunk of the season to put itself in that position. But at the same time, tonight’s game felt like something: a flashing light pointing to “E” on the fans’ patience, a flashpoint of frustration with this offense. Whether that touchpoint is the bottom of the abyss, leading to a bounce-back, or the edge of the cliff the team will go over as the Astros threaten to overtake them in the standings remains to be seen.