Late rally, but Marco Gonzales shelled as Mariners’ homestand against Astros ends in a thud
This Seattle Mariners homestand wasn’t supposed to look pretty. Not with the two teams that duked it out against each other in last year’s World Series in town, not with ace James Paxton watching in the dugout while on the disabled list, and to top it all, a thick layer of smoke from wildfires shrouding Safeco Field.
But by the end of the fourth inning, Wednesday’s game was just ugly, the Houston Astros blanking the Mariners with an eight-run lead.
Seattle did rally with a five-run sixth that cut the deficit to two runs, but by the end the Astros had left town with a 10-7 victory after belting Marco Gonzales around for 11 hits and a career-high eight runs allowed.
The Mariners (72-56) fell to 5.5 games back of the Astros (77-50) in the American League West and are 4.5 back of the Oakland Athletics.
The Mariners allowed 44 runs in their last six games. Tough homestand.
“Yeah, that’s one way to put it,” Mariners manager Scott Servais said. “We did not play a lot of great baseball here at home.”
But just imagine how this 2-4 homestand would have looked had the Mariners not balked off for a win against the Dodgers on Saturday, or received Robinson Cano’s go-ahead, eighth-inning three-run homer in a 7-4 victory over Houston on Monday.
And just imagine where they’d be had they not swept the Astros in Houston almost two weeks ago.
That four-game sweep at the time looked like a momentum builder. But with consecutive series losses to the A’s, Dodgers and Astros, that sweep was absolutely vital for the Mariners.
Since then they’ve used eight different starting pitchers in their past eight games, including Gonzales for the first time since Aug. 13. This was a run that included starts from Nick Vincent and Roenis Elias.
Entering Wednesday there were only three teams in the major leagues with a higher team ERA in August than the 5.22 ERA the Mariners staff has after this loss.
And this is after the Mariners scored the fewest runs of any team in July.
That’s why Seattle has gone from 1.5 games back of the Astros (7.5 up on the A’s) at the end of June to now being in danger of falling out of playoff contention.
“To beat the good teams they aren’t going to fold – you got to play a complete game and do it on both sides of the ball,” Servais said. “The pitching has been rough and we’ve started a bunch of different starters here in this stretch and the pitching is what really kept us going in the first half. We were getting consistent five-plus, six-plus innings every time out there and that just hasn’t happened.
“It’s where are at right now. We still have a lot of ball left to play.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-partner="tweetdeck"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">.<a href="https://twitter.com/RobinsonCano?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@RobinsonCano</a> making his 1st start at 3rd base flashes the leather with a nice defensive play. <a href="https://twitter.com/ROOTSPORTS_NW?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@ROOTSPORTS_NW</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/Mariners?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Mariners</a> <a href="https://t.co/Qmhzeoqhvd">pic.twitter.com/Qmhzeoqhvd</a></p>— ROOT SPORTS™ | NW (@ROOTSPORTS_NW) <a href="https://twitter.com/ROOTSPORTS_NW/status/1032400060670066689?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 22, 2018</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Down 9-2, the Mariners bats found some life in a five-run sixth inning.
Nelson Cruz, who had homered in the fourth, led off with a double. Denard Span singled, Ryon Healy rifled an RBI single (as part of his three hits) and Ben Gamel was hit by a pitch to chase Houston starter Charlie Morton.
Against reliever Joe Smith, Mike Zunino and Dee Gordon followed with sacrifice flies before Mitch Haniger got ahold of an 87-mph sinker just off the plate for a two-run home run. That was Hainger’s 20th home run of the season and suddenly the Mariners were back in this, trailing 9-7.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-partner="tweetdeck"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">No quit. <br><br>Once down eight, a five-run sixth has the Mariners back in this game. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TrueToTheBlue?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TrueToTheBlue</a> <a href="https://t.co/7VlEtXg0Sy">pic.twitter.com/7VlEtXg0Sy</a></p>— Seattle Mariners (@Mariners) <a href="https://twitter.com/Mariners/status/1032400811689631745?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 22, 2018</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
So at least there was something positive for the Mariners to take into Thursday’s off day before a trip to Arizona to face the National League West-leading Diamondbacks.
The Mariners found themselves in a 8-0 deficit because of another shaky outing by Gonzales, who was pitching on extra rest after being scheduled to pitch Sunday. He said he hasn’t felt the effects of a career-high 145 2/3 innings pitched and 25 starts (he started seven games last season after missing 2016 with Tommy John surgery), but Servais said he had noticed some lacking in Gonzales’ timing in his delivery.
The Astros didn’t hit him hard, but got about everything to fall for base hits, including six consecutive hits to start the fourth inning to chase him.
“You have days you give up hard line drives that are outs and then days you give up a lot of bloop hits and everything in between,” Gonzales said. “That’s what I’m going out and trying to do is get weak contact, but you want it on the ground and to our guys. I just have to keep making pitches and stay after it.”
Gonzales entered August with a 3.37 ERA that’s now spiked to 4.32 four starts later. He’s allowed 23 runs and 38 hits in his past 20 innings pitched. He tied a career-high 12 hits allowed in Texas two starts ago.
It’s not like there aren’t other struggling Mariners – like Dee Gordon, who is 10-for-63 (.159) in August, though he hit a double in the fifth inning Wednesday. Mike Zunino is batting .177 this month (11-for-62) and Kyle Seager is hitting .195 (15-for-77). But this is all making for very little time remaining on the Mariners’ 2018 playoff hopes.
“I think we have a lot of time left,” Gonzales countered. “We have a lot of time left to get everything firing on all cylinders. This team has done a great job of when one part struggles the other parts step up and we’re really close to everything to be firing and we have September to get hot and I think that’s going to be good for us.”
This story was originally published August 22, 2018 at 4:23 PM.