A year ago, the Mariners were six games into their season when they found their first four-game losing streak.
This season, they’ve reached that point in just five games.
On a frigid Monday night at T-Mobile Park, the Mariners got a less-than-stellar start from George Kirby, scored only a handful of runs despite ample opportunities and allowed a comeback-killing homer late in the game in a 7-3 loss to the Angels.
After opening the season with a win, Seattle has lost four straight games — all at home — and has looked bad doing so.
“It’s a little frustrating,” manager Scott Servais said, sounding something more than a little frustrated. “Players are frustrated. We all are. We are just capable of playing much better than we are right now.”
Even with all of the success of last season, which included the team’s first postseason appearance in more than two decades, digging yourself into an early hole is less than optimal.
In 2022, the Mariners won their first two games in Minnesota and then lost four straight games on the road — two versus the Twins and two to the White Sox. They didn’t let that streak get to five games, winning in the series finale against the White Sox with a brilliant outing from Logan Gilbert.
Seattle’s best pitcher, Luis Castillo, who started in the Mariners' only win thus far, will try to put an end to the losing on Tuesday night. It’s what an “ace” does for a team.
“Offensively, we had some chances to score a few more runs than we did,” Servais said. “You’ve got to take advantage when those guys get on third base with less than two outs. We weren’t able to push an extra run across.”
Most of Seattle’s offense in these five games has been provided by three players — Julio Rodriguez, Ty France and Eugenio Suarez — with J.P. Crawford chipping in on Monday night, reaching base three times and scoring twice.
In five games, the Mariners have scored just 15 runs, but have a team slash line of .188/.256/.303 with 43 strikeouts in 165 plate at-bats. Seattle has 31 hits in five games. The only teams with fewer than 31 hits in MLB have played in four games.
“It’s been a struggle here early on,” Servais said. “It’s not for lack of trying or lack of effort or preparation. But at the end of the day, you’ve got to get it done and we haven’t done it here in the last three or four games. Offensively, it has been a challenge.”
Given his talent, power stuff and competitive streak, the Mariners felt confident in Kirby coming into the series opener against an improved Angels squad that took two of three against the Athletics in Oakland in the previous series.
But Kirby’s first start didn’t quite go as expected. He struggled to keep Angels hitters off base, giving up more contact than usual, and didn’t make it out of the fifth inning.
The hardest of that contact came in the fifth inning. With the scored tied at 2, Kirby issued a leadoff walk to Mike Trout that left Kirby irritated on the mound. He abhors walks, but leadoff walks are vastly more enraging.
It brought Shohei Ohtani to the plate. Kirby nearly hit Ohtani with a breaking ball, then got a foul ball on a 94-mph pitch to even the count. But a change-up that stayed in the middle of the plate was hammered over the wall in deep right-center for a 4-2 lead.
“I’m not gonna be scared of him,” Kirby said of Ohtani. “I probably should’ve let that change-up go down a little bit more. I left it up a bit too much.”
Kirby’s outing ended two batters later with one out in the fifth inning.
It was a disappointing outing for the ultra-talented Kirby.
Servais admitted that Angels hitters looked comfortable against Kirby and were hunting fastballs down in the strike zone and hitting them hard.
“They were pretty aggressive against his fastball tonight,” Servais said. “George is gonna fill up the zone. That’s what he does. He’s really good at it. He couldn’t quite get them off their rhythm or off their timing.”
Kirby saw it as well.
“They were swinging a lot,” he said. “I could have gone inside a lot more today. That makes my four-seam (fastball) so much better when I’m going in with the two-seam fastball. That’s something we’ve got to do next week more. I need to attack the inside part of the plate.”
Still, the Mariners answered the Ohtani homer with a run in the bottom of the fifth on a two-out RBI single from Suarez to cut the lead to 4-3.
But their comeback hopes ended in the eighth inning when right-hander Matt Festa allowed a two-run blast to Taylor Ward that put the game essentially out of reach. The Angels would tack on another run of Festa in the ninth.
Seattle had just five hits in the game and yet still managed to be 2 for 10 with runners in scoring position while stranding seven runners on base.
Kirby’s teammates gave him a 1-0 lead in the first inning against tough lefty starter Reid Detmers. Rodriguez worked a leadoff walk, stole second and scored on Suarez’s two-out double into the left-field corner.
But the Angels answered immediately in the top of the second. Kirby gave up a leadoff double to local product Jake Lamb, who played for the Mariners late last season. Luis Rengifo, a one-time minor-leaguer in the Mariners system, tied the game with a soft single to left field.
The duo of Lamb and Rengifo again combined to erase a Mariners lead.
Ty France’s RBI double provided a short-lived, 2-1 advantage in the third inning. Lamb led off the fourth inning with a single and later scored on Rengifo’s single through the right side to make it 2-2. The trio of Lamb, Rengifo and Brandon Drury combined to total six of the nine hits off Kirby.
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