Dodgers played home run derby ... and didn’t invite the Mariners
Some resurrected careers have carried the Los Angeles Dodgers this season. Matt Kemp back to All-Star Matt Kemp; Max Muncy from Oakland castoff to home-run-mashing first baseman; and Manny Machado escaping the doldrums of last-place Baltimore ... just to name a few.
But the Seattle Mariners? They’re running out of time if they’re going to resurrect their pre-All-Star break winning ways.
Mariners manager Scott Servais got right to it.
“That was a bad ball game,” he said.
Wade LeBlanc and Christian Bergman combined to allow five home runs – tied for the most the Mariners have allowed in a game this season – and that was through seven innings in an 11-1 Dodgers win on Friday at Safeco Field. It all occurred in front of 46,796, which was the Mariners’ fourth sellout this season and the third-largest crowd in Safeco Field history.
Machado hit two of those moonshots, Muncy, Kemp and Yasmani Grandal handled the rest — though none of those homers came against utility position player Andrew Romine, who was the Mariners’ white flag pitching in the ninth inning.
“Not a good night,” Servais said. “We can sit and dwell on it, but it is what it is. We got beat soundly and we have to come back tomorrow and get after them.”
The Mariners (70-54) had one run and one homer – one that Ryon Healy bounced off the top of the wall in right field in the bottom of the fourth inning against Dodgers rookie right-hander Walker Buehler.
And the last time the Mariners allowed another team to hit five homers at Safeco Field was against the Angels on Sept. 3, 2016.
.“They have a great team,” said Robinson Cano, who was playing in his first game at Safeco Field since May 6 after serving an 80-game suspension for violating major league baseball’s joint drug agreement. “This was one of those days you want to go out and win for all the fans, but you need to understand there’s a team on the other side and they got some of the best players in the game and the guy who was pitching is pretty good.”
Buehler, a 24-year-old, allowed three hits in six innings with eight strikeouts, and lowered his season ERA to 3.19.
Seattle fell 3½ games back of the Athletics and are 4½ games behind the Astros, who lost on a walk-off homer to the A’s in the 10th inning. The Mariners have scored five runs in 30 innings in the three games since Cano returned to the lineup.
LeBlanc allowed seven runs for the second time in his four starts this month, though five were earned in this one because two scored after Mitch Haniger misplayed a fly ball in right field in the fifth inning. LeBlanc lasted 4 1/3 innings and his ERA (4.04) is at its highest since before he transitioned from the Mariners bullpen to the starting rotation in late April.
LeBlanc breezed through the first two innings until Grandal jumped on the second pitch of the third inning, a cutter on the bottom corner of the plate, for a solo home run. But three batters later he was out of the inning.
But more homers in the fourth inning, starting with a first-pitch curveball to Dodgers’ deadline pickup Manny Machado, the former Orioles shortstop. Muncy added a two-out, two-run home run four batters later for a 4-0 Dodgers lead.
If you recall, Muncy hit .186 in 51 games with the Athletics two years ago. He then spent all of last season facing the Tacoma Rainiers with Triple-A Oklahoma City and, oh, now he’s hit 27 home runs for the Dodgers with 54 RBI so far this season.
LeBlanc was walking back to the dugout with one out in the fifth inning after Bellinger’s RBI single and by the end of the fifth the Dodgers had a 7-1 lead.
“I made a few mistakes, got away with a couple of them and three of them I didn’t,” LeBlanc said. “That’s what happens when you run into a good lineup like they have and that’s what happens when you make mistakes, especially when you do that with the stuff like I have – they’re going to make you pay.”
It didn’t get better with Bergman throwing. Machado sent a two-run home run into the left-field bullpen seats and Kemp followed two batters later with a two-run shot of his own – just like that, 11-1 Dodgers lead.
A few takeaways:
Cano’s back
Robinson Cano walked to the plate to a mixture of cheers and boos at Safeco Field in his game in Seattle since May 6 because of his 80-game suspension for violating major league baseball’s joint drug agreement.
Granted, the park was filled with a lot of Dodger blue, reminiscent of the Blue Jays jerseys that frequently fill the stands when Toronto’s team is in town. It was a sold-out night: 46,796 in attendance.
Not that Cano noticed.
“All that was going through my head is go to the plate and then rake,” Cano said. “Put the ball in play and get on base for the team. But, I mean, it’s always a great feeling walking up to the plate and being able to play your first game at home.
“It’s good to get that one out of the way.”
Cano went 0-for-3 with a walk and a fly out to the warning track in right-field with Dodgers right fielder Kike Hernandez leaping into the wall to take away extra bases in the eighth inning.
Since Cano was reinserted into the Mariners’ lineup on Wednesday in Oakland, the Mariners are 1-2, he’s 3-for-12 and the Mariners have scored five runs as a team in 30 innings.
LeBlanc’s innings
LeBlanc’s 4 1/3 innings pitched gives him 122 2/3 total for the season.
He’s enjoying the best season of his career in many ways, but consider that he tossed 68 innings out of the bullpen with the Pittsburgh Pirates all of last year. So he’s already at almost double that. He threw 62 the season before, including eight starts with the Mariners.
The Mariners are skipping Marco Gonzales’ next start (which was scheduled for Sunday but he’ll go Wednesday, instead) to be cautious with his career-high innings workload, but LeBlanc hasn’t pitched this many innings in a season since 2010 with the Padres. And he’s noted that he hadn’t felt right mechanically in the past few starts, including when he allowed seven runs in a loss to the Astros.
“It’s the end of August and you got to fight through it until you get to Sept. 1 and there’s a few more reinforcements that can come onto your roster,” Servais said. “But that’s a part of the big-league season. It’s a marathon, so certainly we’ll look at Wade and our rotation as we go forward. We got some off days coming up so he will get stretched out a little bit and get some extra time between starts. That helps everybody this time of the year.”
LeBlanc said he actually felt better entering this start than some of his previous ones this month, though.
“But I didn’t quite have the execution I need,” LeBlanc said. “So we’ll get that ironed out.
“I feel good. I think it’s just kind of mid-August and usually there is a second wind that comes here soon. Hopefully we’ll catch that second wind as a team and get rolling and find our way into the playoffs.”
Opportunity lost
Maybe this game will be defined, maybe it wasn’t, by the bottom of the third inning, when the Mariners loaded the bases with one out but left with nothing to show for it.
Haniger reached second base because he hustled on a shallow fly ball into right field that Brian Dozier would drop for a two-base error. Robinson Cano and Nelson Cruz followed with back-to-back walks to juice the bases for cleanup hitter Denard Span.
Span was hitting fourth because manager Scott Servais stacked the top of the lineup with the Mariners’ top on-base leaders and Jean Segura was out on paternity leave.
He hit a soft grounder to first base and Muncy threw home to get the force on Haniger. Kyle Seager followed with a fly ball caught at the warning track in center field.
No Mariners runs.
An opportunity like that against this Dodgers rookie, Walker Buehler? It wouldn’t come again.
Play of the game
The Mariners trailed 2-0 when Manny Machado hit his first home run, rocking a low curveball over the left-field wall.
But the one Wade LeBlanc said he’ll be losing sleep over was later in the inning with two outs and two strikes against Max Muncy. He left a curveball in the upper-middle part of the plate and Muncy sent it over the right-field wall for a two-run shot and a 4-0 Dodgers lead.
“I take pride in the fact that if I’m going to give up homers, I typically limit the dmage to solo homers,” LeBlanc said. “But I left that one up and that happens sometimes.”
Top batter
Manny Machado makes that Dodgers lineup pretty lethal. He doubled his home run total he’s had since arriving in Los Angeles in a trade-deadline deal from the Orioles, hitting two home runs with three RBI.
He’s hit 28 homers this season and now he’s on an LA squad that leads the National League with 171 home runs.
Ryon Healy’s solo homer was his 23rd of the season.
Kyle Seager went 0-for-4 for the Mariners, dropping his season batting average to .225. His career-low batting average for a season is .249, which he batted last year.
Top pitcher
Dodgers 24-year-old rookie Walker Buehler was as-advertised. His high-velocity mixed with a hard slider limited the Mariners offense to three hits and one Healy homer in six innings pitched. He struck out eight batters.
Christian Bergman allowed four runs off homers allowed to Matt Kemp and Manny Machado in 2 2/3 innings after entering in relief for Wade LeBlanc, who allowed seven runs (five earned) in 4 1/3 innings.
Andrew Romine pitched a scoreless ninth inning … lowering his season ERA to 9.00.
Quotable
“It’s one loss,” Servais said. “It hurts when you lose 5-4 and this is 11-1 … it is what it is. I don’t want to dwell on it too much. I think the best thing with this one is to get on with the fireworks show (which was after the game). We had a really good crowd tonight and we got nothing going. Just didn’t play a good ball game.”
This story was originally published August 17, 2018 at 9:56 PM.