Mariners confronted problems in players-only meeting. Now they hope they put bad baseball behind them

The Seattle Mariners’ clubhouse had an eerie feel after their loss Friday night, pushing their losing skid to four games. It was void of players, the only inhabitants being a couple clubhouse attendants and reporters.

It remained that way until a throng of players walked in, most talking amongst each other en route to their lockers, but none with the look of dejection or bitterness following a players-only meeting.

Catcher Mike Zunino has been in a few of those over his six seasons with the Mariners.

“A lot of times you can get some guys who speak their minds, but for the most part those are just for getting everyone on the same page, and getting that out there in the air is one step of just putting it behind you,” Zunino said. “I think really the difference between now and years past, though, is we have a lot of guys who know what needs to be done and really know what we were doing when we were right and we just want to bottle that up from early in the year.

“It’s really about getting back to our brand of baseball and trusting what we do. I think maybe in years past we really didn’t know what that exactly was.”

Teams typically only have these postgame players-only meetings when things reach a crescendo of frustration. Some fans respond with a raised eyebrow when they hear about players-only meetings, like it’s become a sports cliché.

It’s unlikely there’s a Disney-movie unbeatable stretch coming up for the Mariners, but they say there were some benefits.

“We definitely needed something like that,” Nelson Cruz said. “When you got a problem, confront it. Embrace it. That’s what we did.”

The meeting came after the Mariners dropped 1.5 games behind the Oakland Athletics for the American League’s final wild card, and about a month after the Mariners were eight games up on the A’s to start July. If the season ended after Friday night, the Mariners would miss the playoffs for the 17th consecutive season.

Mariners manager Scott Servais wasn’t in the meeting for obvious reasons, but he was part of a few of those in his own playing career when he was a catcher from 1991-2001.

“It can definitely be helpful to get everybody together and understand where we’re at,” Servais said. “I don’t know what was said or anything like that, but meetings are meetings – sometimes you have too many meetings and that means things aren’t going well. We’ve been struggling, but players have done it here before in my tenure and they’ve usually responded pretty well after it.”

Players said there was no finger-pointing, no berating. Just a talk of putting this putrid stretch of games behind them.

“We have a very tight-knit group here,” Zunino said. “Everyone has each other’s backs here and everyone is able to pick one another up.

“We don’t need to go out there and score 15 runs, and we don’t need to be just shutting every team out, pitching-wise. We know how we can win games, so it was just about taking that pressure off of ourselves and just go out and play and know we are a good enough team to win the tight ball games. Go out and play our brand of baseball.”

Mariners lefty Marco Gonzales echoed that.

“The only conversation is that we’re going to stay together through this,” Gonzales said. ‘This is a long season – 162 games – and it’s not lost in any one series or game. But thew ay we’re going to get this done is to stay together and play together and play like the team we were in the first part of the season – playing to prove people wrong. We’re going to continue to do that.”

The problem is the Mariners’ offense was actually scoring runs earlier in the season.

They’ve gone from averaging 4.4 runs through the end of June, when they were 53-31, to averaging 3.3 since June 1, entering Saturday with a 10-16 record in that stretch.

Servais thought back to when the Mariners lost Robinson Cano to an 80-game drug suspension (one he’ll return from on Aug. 14). The Mariners went 23-8 over their next 31 games without Cano, when players weren’t trying to make up for his loss, just doing their individual jobs.

The Mariners had the best record in baseball over that stretch.

“I said it when Cano went out, just don’t try to do too much,” Servais said. “Just do your jo. If you’re here to play defense, play defense. If you’re here to steal bases and score runs, just do that. Don’t try to do more. I think that’s something we really took on and lived it when Robbie first was out – and we ran with it. When you just try to do your job, sometimes bigger things happen, and I think that’s a little bit of now – everybody wants to step up. They want to get hot, they want to do your thing. No, just do your job.

“No one in the room can do it on their own. Can’t happen. (James Paxton) is really good, but somebody has to catch it, somebody has to be standing behind him making plays, and it can’t be one guy. It’s everybody in the room. That’s how you get it done.”

‘Dump on our dining room table’

Servais was about out of his seat talking about Marco Gonzales’ comment from Friday night, talking about the takeover of Blue Jays fans from Canada for this Blue Jays-Mariners series.

Here’s Gonzales quote:

“I take that personally,” he said of all the Blue Jays fans cheering against the Mariners at Safeco Field. “I take that personally when a team comes in here and brings their faithful fans and their muddy shoes and stomps on our carpet and takes a dump on our dining room table. I take it personal. I tried to let that be known.”

Servais began adjusting items on his office table during a pregame talk with reporters on Saturday.

“Let me see if my table is cleared,” he said. “That’s the first thing I was doing when I came in today.”

He laughed.

“I thought it was a tremendous line. It’s the best line I’ve heard out of one of our players in the three years I’ve been here.”

But about those Blue Jays fans …

“They’ve been loud,” Servais said. “I don’t like it. Our players don’t like it. We’ve had enough of it. There’s only one way to keep them quiet, that I know of.”

Short hops

Dee Gordon didn’t start Saturday’s game to recover from his sore ankle. He rolled it and was taken out of the game in the ninth inning of the Mariners’ loss on Thursday night, but he returned and played Friday. Servais didn’t think Gordon would miss more than a day.

Servais had no timetable on right-hander Juan Nicasio’s recovery. Nicasio headed to the disabled list on Friday with inflammation in his knee.

“I certainly think he can come back and impact this year down the stretch,” Servais said. “But I don’t know.”

Right-hander Erasmo Ramirez was scheduled to throw what will likely be his final rehab start with Triple-A Tacoma on Sunday. Servais said he was hoping Ramirez could get stretched out to five innings pitched. He also confirmed Felix Hernandez will make his next start in the rotation on Tuesday in Texas against the Rangers.

On tap

Right-hander Mike Leake (8-7, 4.16 ERA) starts the final of the four-game series for the Mariners against the Blue Jays, who will start right-hander and former Mariner Sam Gaviglio (2-4, 5.10 ERA).

The game will start at 1:10 p.m. Sunday at Safeco Field and broadcast on Root Sports and 710-AM radio.

This story was originally published August 4, 2018 at 6:32 PM.