Mariners lay egg, egg is bad

There are only so many times you can say “today was a typical Mariners game”, and there are only so many ways you can say it. You can do it through fantastic allegory, deadpan comparison to Buzzfeed style, or cruel despair. Some days, though, the Mariners play just like the Mariners, and the only thing you can say is, “Well, yes, Mariners.”

Today was one of those days the Mariners played like the Mariners. Here’s to me to say “well, yeah, Mariners”: their limited offense came through cheap land visitors and bloopers who accidentally found purchases with rounds based. Their pitching was good, but not very good enough. It was another game to watch as overpowered players did not follow the standards of Major League Baseball. We’ve seen it (literally) a thousand times. We will probably (literally) see it a thousand more.

So, as always, we focus on the little things and hope that there is enough to get us through.

By breaking something wild, today’s main focus was on the continued success of Justus Sheffield. And away from two straight starts in which Justus was good-to-great, the young Southpaw delivered a third.

Troy Taormina-USA TODAY Sports

Justus’ departure started just-okay. The 24-year-old struggled a bit with his command. He took 17 pitches to get through the first inning and allowed two line-drive singles along the way. The second inning was a little better. Justus would have had a clean 13-pitch inning, but a mistake by Dee Gordon caused him to put out 21 total pitches and give up a run.

After that, however, Justus crosses. He set out to make contact, and although he only sat around 92 MPH for the rest of the game, he used his switch to keep the Astros out of balance for the most part. His day ended with a more than acceptable line: 6.0 IP, four strikeouts, one walk, one deserved run, and 89 pitches. If not for Dee’s error, he would probably have been capable of the seventh inning.

When it did, however, that honor was handed over to Dan Altavilla. The tough ball of muscle has had a fleeting year so far, but he came shockingly close to an immobile inning. Altavilla pumps eight of its first nine pitches into the strike zone. He hit 99 MPH at one point, showing a glimpse of the plus reliever we know he could be.

The Mariner hitters were meanwhile destroyed by Lance McCullers’ curveball for the better part of six innings. They managed to scrape two runes over in the third due to the pure BABIP luck.

First, Joe Odom rode in Evan White with a ground ball that was hit directly at Yuli Gurriel. Gurriel did not have to move at all for the ball, but could not get in one way or another. Three fighters later, Kyle Lewis hit a bloop single to center to ride in Odom.

I think you need hits like that if you want to win baseball games, but that was almost all Mariners could manage. Their other chances were missed, either by leaving tour guides at the base (seven total per day) or by pissing them off (two runners caught stealing).

Joey Gerber went through where Altavilla left off, albeit without the sheer horsepower and glamorous teeth. No offense to Joey Gerber’s teeth, which look perfectly fine. As good as Altavilla and Gerber were against the dreaded Astro lineup, the relief core of the Astros did not have much trouble matching them to the quad-A Mariners.

Andre Scrubb, Enoli Paredes, Blake Taylor, and Ryan Pressley allowed a single hit between them over 3.1 innings. I had not yet heard at least two of those players for this season. It’s always fun to add articles to the large reservoir of useless information, I think. Apologies to the Scrubbs family, but yes, I consider my knowledge of your son’s existence more or less useless.

The Mariners were eventually forced to put Erik Swanson in the game. Swanson appears to be extremely broken, and although I hope he can repair himself at some point, that point was not today. He gave a walk to Kyle Tucker and thus accelerated the departure of the Mariners from Houston.

This was the Mariners’ fifth loss in a row, plumping (sending?) To third place in the Kumar Rocker sweepstakes, but 2.5 games ahead (behind?) The 4-14 Pirates. They will next go to Los Angeles for a series against the Dodgers, where things only promise to get less (better?) In their demand for improvement (decline?).