Vitamin SEA: The Road Trip From Hell
It's all going wrong early for the Mariners
The hard part about writing and talking about baseball for a living is that when your team sucks, there’s nowhere to hide.
The Mariners have dropped five games in a row, and in classic Mariner fashion, wasted one of the best pitching staffs in the league with some truly catatonic offense. Of course it’s early, but dropping an ugly series to the Angels only to turn around and get swept by the Rangers is bad news. Five divisional losses in a row is bad at any point in the season, as these games could be vital for future tiebreakers.
Not only have the Mariners dropped five in a row, they have done it in very frustrating fashion:
April 4th @ Angels: Mariners lose 1-0 after Jo Adell robs THREE HOME RUNS.
April 5th @ Angels: Mariners lose 8-7 in 11 innings after five lead changes and striking out fifteen times
April 6th @ Rangers: Mariners lose 2-1, Cal Raleigh finally gets his first home run of the year only for the Mariners to summon no more offense.
April 7th @ Rangers: Mariners lose 3-2, Kyle Higashioka of all people hits the eventual game-winning home run.
April 8th @ Rangers: Mariners lose 3-0, Connor Joe throws the ball over Mitch Garvers head to cause all three runs to score, Mariners get two hits.
This is sluggish baseball that cannot be blamed on the marine layer, this is in Anaheim and Arlington. The Mariners are last in the league as a team in batting average with .184, and last in OPS with .581. Over the last five games, the Mariners have struck out 54 times, averaging almost 11 per game. Two weeks into the season, the group of Cal Raleigh, Julio Rodriguez, and Josh Naylor have combined for -0.4 bWAR, slashing .130/.220/.164, 1 home run, and 45 strikeouts. I am not loving what I am seeing. In the meantime, the pitching staff is top 5 in the league in nearly every category, a situation that seems to happen every single season for this Mariners team.
The Mariners mercifully have a day off today, before starting another important four games at home against Houston. The Astros have a team ERA of 6.05, good for 29th in MLB, and they just lost their ace in Hunter Brown for at least three weeks. With the dismal pitching from Houston and the equally dismal offense from Seattle, this will be a series to forget.
Ok I’ve gotten all the frustration out of my system. It has only been two weeks, Mariners fans know that this team starts slow offensively, and this team is full of players who are proven to be consistently good. When they catch fire in the summer and fans forget all about this slow start it will feel very good. A struggling Houston team at home is exactly what this team needs to jump start the season. Win this series, and don’t look back. Please. Please. Please.
Go M’s,
Henry “Really thankful for Brendan Donovan” Neiman