SEATTLE — Over the course of baseball’s 162-game season, a game in which nothing seems to go right — whether it’s on the mound, in the batter’s box, in the field or some combination of all three — is going to happen. It’s unavoidable over that many games.
Managers have an assortment of labels for these forgettable performances. “Clunker” is a favorite of manager Scott Servais.
And while such lackluster performances are expected if not willingly accepted, it just looks and feels a little worse when one comes in the second game of the season.
A night after a crisp and exciting victory on opening day, which delighted a sellout crowd, the Seattle Mariners offered up a sloppy showing of inefficient pitching and inadequate defense that left the sizable, but not sellout, crowd of 31,516 grumbling and irritated after sitting through chilly temps Friday evening to see a 9-4 loss to the Cleveland Guardians.
The Mariners made three errors, allowed four unearned runs and walked eight batters, including Mike Zunino twice, which isn’t exactly aligned with their ethos of run prevention and controlling the strike zone.
The problems started with left-hander Robbie Ray, who looked nothing like the pitcher that dominated in spring training with a mid-90s fastball and better-than-average command.
Instead, Ray seemed to be fighting to find a rhythm with his delivery that was never found in an outing that never made it out of the fourth inning.
Ray’s struggles with his command were apparent when he walked Jose Ramirez and Josh Bell with two outs in the first inning but got out unscathed.
Seattle gave Ray a 1-0 lead after Julio Rodriguez led off the bottom of the first with a double and scored on Kolten Wong’s single to right. But it didn’t last.
Ray gave up a leadoff single to Oscar Gonzalez and then watched as no one fielded Andres Gimenez’s bunt single. A walk to Zunino loaded the bases for Cleveland.
No. 9 hitter Myles Straw hit a soft fly ball to right field that was caught by Teoscar Hernandez, who fired the ball toward cutoff man Ty France on the infield grass. Gonzalez, who was on third base, had no real intention of scoring, taking a few steps and stopping.
Hernandez’s throw started leaking toward first base and hit an unsuspecting Zunino on the shoulder as he was retreating to the bag. The ball bounced away from France and toward the third-base dugout, allowing Gonzalez to race home. Ray, who was backing up home on the play, sprinted for the ball and tried to make an off-balance throw to Cal Raleigh to get Gonzalez. His throw was nowhere close to Raleigh. It skidded toward the on-deck circle by the first-base dugout, allowing Gimenez to score from second base on the play and Zunino to advance from first to third.
Two runs scored on one play. Steven Kwan made it 3-1 by scoring Zunino with a sac fly. The former Oregon State standout was just getting started.
Seattle tied the score in the third inning when Raleigh smoked a two-out double to right-center that made it 3-3.
But Ray’s struggle would continue. He walked Gimenez to start the fourth inning and allowed a single to Straw. After the two base runners executed a double steal, Kwan dumped a bloop double that landed on the third-base line just over Eugenio Suarez’s head to score both runners for a 5-3 lead.
Ray shook his head in disbelief. His outing was finished. His line: 3 1/3 innings pitched, five runs (three earned) allowed, four hits, five walks and just three strikeouts. Of his 91 pitches, 51 were strikes.
Trevor Gott, who replaced Ray, was able to end the fourth inning without any more runs scored. The Mariners trimmed the lead to 5-4 on Rodriguez’s RBI double to left.
But a costly mistake in the fifth led to more unearned runs.
Wong dropped a force out at second base and it eventually led to three unearned runs with Kwan lacing a two-run single to left field, giving him five RBI on the night.
