Mariners lose again as fans boo following 4-1 loss to Orioles
SEATTLE – The boos started for Jorge Polanco 24 hours earlier and carried into his first plate appearance of Wednesday evening, growing louder as his struggles continued to snowball.
And when Julio Rodriguez’s weak pop fly was caught in foul territory for the 27th out in another loss for the Mariners, the boos rained down from all levels of T-Mobile Park for all them from what was left of the crowd of 37,988.
The Mariners have been defeated by wider margins and have somehow looked even worse at the plate.
But Thursday’s 4-1 loss to the Orioles was just a familiar way to fail, something that has happened far too often.
The Mariners have lost 10 of their past 13 games. Their lead in the AL West is down to two games and could be gone by the weekend.
The familiar phrases of “it happens” and “it’s baseball” are ringing hollow.
The Mariners didn’t get their typically strong start from Logan Gilbert. And the offense wasn’t good enough, and really hasn’t been most of the season, to pick him up.
Gilbert pitched 5⅓ innings, allowing four runs on six hits, striking out six and walking three. It snapped a string of five consecutive quality starts for Gilbert.
The last time he failed to pitch at least six innings in an outing came on May 9 vs. the Twins at Target Field. He allowed eight runs on nine hits.
In the nine outings after that clunker, Gilbert posted a 2.54 ERA with 48 strikeouts and six walks and eight quality starts.
Gilbert looked strong in the first two innings, retiring six of the seven batters he faced with a pair of strikeouts.
But his outing fell apart in the third inning. The issues started when he got up 0-2 on No. 9 hitter Ramon Urias, the older brother of former Mariner Luis Urias, and couldn’t put him away, eventually walking him.
Gilbert came back to strike out the dangerous Gunnar Henderson, but the third out of the inning wouldn’t come for another five batters.
The Orioles’ key hit was Ryan O’Hearn’s two-run double to left-center
.
It looked as if Julio Rodriguez might save Gilbert from impending doom when Ryan O’Hearn launched a slider to deep left-center.
Shaded more toward right-center, Rodriguez sprinted after the ball, covering 91 feet in just over 4 seconds per MLB Statcast data, but he couldn’t complete the play. The ball hit off the top of his glove as he slid on the warning track to avoid colliding with the wall.
It would’ve been
It went for a two-run double for O’Hearn. The Orioles tacked on another run when Anthony Santander singled up the middle. It was the first time Gilbert had allowed three earned runs in an outing since June 10.
O’Hearn made it 4-0 in the fifth inning, yanking a slider over the wall in right field for his 11th homer of the season.
Given how abysmal the Mariners offense has been for the last two weeks, a four-run deficit felt more like 40 runs.
Baltimore starter Dean Kremer, a relatively nondescript MLB pitcher, who rocks an above-average man-bun, carved Seattle up for five scoreless innings, allowing just two hits – a pair of singles – with two walks and eight strikeouts.
The Mariners first run came after Kremer exited the game and Cal Raleigh greeted his replacement, lefty Keegan Akin, with a solo homer to left-center in the bottom of the sixth.