Mariners postseason hopes fading after deflating loss to Astros
The postseason hopes the Mariners have been clinging to down the stretch of this shortened season faded a bit more Tuesday night at T-Mobile Park.
Seattle (24-31) realistically needed a sweep of the Astros in this three-game series to keep the pressure on their American League West rivals this final week, but won’t get one now.
A night after an offensive burst in the later innings lifted Seattle to a series-opening win over the Astros, the bats went silent, the bullpen served up five runs to break a tie in the decisive sixth, and the Mariners stumbled to a 6-1 loss.
With five games to play, Seattle now sits four games behind Houston in the AL West with five games to play. Considering the Astros own the head-to-head tiebreaker, the Mariners would not only need to win Wednesday’s finale to stay in contention for the division’s second playoff berth, they would also have to sweep the A’s in four games this weekend, and the Astros would have to drop all four of their games to last-place Texas for the Mariners to pass them. Seattle is now also 1/2 a game back of the Angels in the division. The Mariners are four games back of Toronto in the AL wild-card race, which offers another still attainable path.
But, the hopes of ending a 19-year playoff drought in Seattle are now bleaker than ever.
“The whole plan all year was to continue to get better, and I believe we have,” Mariners manager Scott Servais said on a postgame video call. “There’s going to be nights like tonight when you’re running a 23-year-old starter out there and trying to piece it together that it just doesn’t happen for you.
“But, I’m really happy with the way we’ve been playing. We’ve been pretty consistent. We played good defense again tonight. I thought (Jake) Fraley a nice play. J.P. (Crawford) lays out for a ball. Doing those little things, some nights you’re going to get the big hits, some nights you’re not. But, we’ll continue to get after it. … We’ll keep grinding it out here, all the way through the end.”
The Mariners fought early, but never led in Tuesday’s deflating loss. Ljay Newsome, who hadn’t thrown more than four innings in three starts for the Mariners this season since taking over Taijuan Walker’s rotation spot after Walker was traded to the Blue Jays, did what was needed to keep the Mariners in a tight game.
“I thought Ljay threw the ball pretty well,” Servais said. “I thought his results were good. The plan going into the game was let him go through the lineup twice, and he was able to do that and kept us right there.”
After allowing a two-out, RBI single to Kyle Tucker in the first, Newsome retired the next eight batters and 11 of his final 13.
“I think my stuff played well,” Newsome said. “I kept them off-balance.”
Crawford aided Newsome, likely saving a run in the fourth, when he fully extended to snare a liner off Alex Bregman’s bat. Tucker doubled to the corner in right moments later. But, Newsome didn’t allow another run after the first, completing his 4 1/3 by catching Martin Maldonado looking for his only strikeout.
“I felt like I could have kept going, but I’m happy with what I did,” Newsome said. “I fought through everything, so it felt good.”
With the order flipping over for the third time, the Mariners turned to Casey Sadler, who worked cleanly out of the fifth, but allowed a solo homer to Michael Brantley to lead off the sixth that gave the Astros the decisive 2-1 lead.
Sadler allowed another a base hit to Tucker — he finished 4-for-5 — and two walks before he was pulled with two outs, and threw a pair of wild pitches that scored another Astros run.
The inning only got worse from there.
Brandon Brennan threw only three pitches before Maldonado hammered a three-run homer into the Mariners’ bullpen in left field to make it 6-1 and break the game open.
“Casey might be one of our hottest relievers,” Servais said. “He’s just been awesome since we’ve acquired him. He’s adjusted his arsenal a little bit. Tonight he just wasn’t quite as sharp. Gave up the home run to Brantley and then was in some trouble there, and threw a ton of pitches in that second inning.
“Obviously Brennan made a mistake to Maldonado and that was kind of the deciding factor in the game when he hit the ball out of the ballpark.”
The Mariners barely matched their production against Framber Valdez in their second meeting with him this season — their first, on Aug. 14, resulted in their most lopsided loss to the Astros this season — managing just one run in the first inning on a Kyle Seager double to right that scored Crawford, tying the game at 1-1.
Valdez gave up the one run on four hits with eight strikeouts in seven innings, including striking out the side to wrap up his outing.
“We just didn’t get a ton going there,” Servais said.
Brady Lail pitched two scoreless innings for the Mariners in the eighth and ninth to keep the deficit at five runs, but Seattle’s offense tallied only one base runner in the final two innings against Houston’s bullpen.
This story was originally published September 22, 2020 at 9:18 PM.
