Soggy night in Chicago for Mariners as they lose fourth straight game

CHICAGO – The weather stunk early and stunk just a little less later in the dreary evening. The conditions ranged from embarrassing to abysmal in the early innings and improved to somewhat miserable as they progressed.

The Seattle Mariners largely followed a similar pattern, slogging their way through the steady rain falling early in the game, matching the sloppy conditions with soggy play and looking as if they were just hoping the game would be stopped or postponed, which it probably should have been.

And when the rain decreased from heavy to steady and finally into a constant mist, they tried to make amends for the earlier mistakes and make it a game. In the end, the result was the same as the previous three games – a defeat.

The Chicago White Sox capitalized on Mariners miscues early and tagged Seattle starter Robbie Ray for three solo homers to roll to a rain-soaked 6-4 victory Wednesday night at Guaranteed Rate Field. Seattle will try to avoid a three-game sweep and salvage what’s left of this road trip gone wrong Thursday afternoon in the series finale.

“Doesn’t get much tougher conditions to play in than that tonight,” Mariners manager Scott Servais said. “Both teams had to deal with it as best we could.”

Well, yes and no. The Mariners bore the brunt of the worst conditions and it hurt them. With various levels of rain hitting the Chicago area starting late Tuesday , there was some thought that Wednesday night’s game would be postponed into a doubleheader on Thursday or even perhaps the White Sox giving up a home game and playing a doubleheader in Seattle late in the season, which was discussed.

Instead, the game’s start time was delayed 47 minutes with the first pitch at 6:57 p.m.

The Mariners still might have preferred a 7:57 p.m. or 8:57 p.m. start instead even after Ty France gave them a 1-0 lead with a solo homer off Chicago starter Dallas Keuchel.

After working around a leadoff single from Tim Anderson for a scoreless first inning, despite some very deep fly balls, Ray found pure misery in the second inning as the rain started falling heavily to the point of it being absurd that the teams were still on the field.

The umpires told Servais pregame they would try to play through the rain and wind, and that it would never be heavy enough to stop it. That missed call was worse than any ball or strike on the night.

Eloy Jimenez led off bottom of the second with a solo homer that tied the game. It only got worse. The next batter, Andrew Vaughan, hit a ground ball that hydroplaned to third baseman Eugenio Suarez, who misplayed it. Vaughan was given a single on the play.

“That second inning it picked up a little bit as far as the rain and I felt like I did decent job of keeping the ball dry,” Ray said before stopping himself from saying something else. “They just strung some hits together.”

Clearly bothered by the rain and trying to dry his pitching hand on the inside thigh portion of his pants, Ray uncorked a wild pitch and then walked Adam Engel. After getting a force out at second base, leaving runners on first and third, Crawford couldn’t glove Jake Burger’s hard one-hopper. The ball bounced off his glove and into left field for a RBI “single” to make it 2-1.

“To be honest, you couldn’t see (crap),” Crawford said. “You couldn’t see the ball come off the bat it was raining so hard. I don’t want to make excuses and I’ve still go to catch the ball. But if you can’t see it coming at you then there is a problem. I don’t think we should’ve playing then.”

In the dugout, Servais yelled at the umpires to see why they were still on the field.

“I was yelling at the umps: ‘What are we doing here?’ ” Servais said. “They were instructed to try to play through it and do everything they could to get this game in. When you’re on the road, and certainly the game starts, it’s in the hands of the umpires at that point.”