By Matt Calkins / The Seattle Times
SEATTLE — Boos rain down from the T-Mobile Park stands every time the Seattle Mariners play. Sometimes it’s after an errant call — real or perceived — from an umpire. Other times it’s on a failed pick-off attempt from the opposing pitcher throwing to first base.
But for the first time this season, at least by all accounts from the scribes populating the press box, the boo birds were aimed directly at the Mariners following their 4-1 defeat Wednesday. And they deserved every one of them.
Following their third straight series loss — this time to the lowly Nationals (32-48) — the Mariners dropped to 38-41 and fell to eighth in the American League wild-card standings. Every morsel of optimism fans might have felt when Seattle won consecutive series during the last homestand has evaporated.
Yes, there are still 83 games left, and yes, the M’s have most of the key roster pieces that powered them to 90 victories last season. But at zero risk of hyperbole, this team has reached a crisis point. It’s now or never-live-it-down.
“It’s spiraling a little bit … We have to turn off the faucet a little bit because it’s running against us,” Mariners manager Scott Servais said. “We have expectations to be a very competitive team. We have not been able to do that for any stretch of the season, quite frankly.”
Remember what 29-39 felt like last year? That moment when the Mariners dropped three straight to the Angels to fall 10 games below .500 following a 90-72 season?
Well, Wednesday’s loss felt like the closest this year’s team has come to that 2022 nadir. Washington was supposed to be the slam-dunk series — the just-don’t-screw-it-up trio of games that provided Seattle with the appropriate momentum before its matchup with the best-record-in-the-AL Rays. But instead of throwing down a Jordan-like jam, the M’s slipped on a wet spot at the rim.
They had the bases loaded with no outs in the bottom of the 10th inning Tuesday and managed not to score, which gave way to a 7-4 loss. Then, they responded with all the fight of a Beanie Baby on Wednesday, failing to score off struggling starter Patrick Corbin (5.32 ERA entering the game) through seven innings before Jose Caballero socked an eighth-inning solo home run off a reliever making his major-league debut.
For separate reasons, those back-to-back losses encapsulated the difference between the Mariners in 2022 vs. 2023. The Tuesday defeat reflected their inability to win close games, something they did as well as any team in the league last year (their 34 one-run victories were tops in MLB). Their Wednesday dud reflected their perpetually anemic offense, which ranks 26th in batting average, 25th in slugging percentage and 24th in OPS.
Servais said Wednesday he is confident in his team’s pitching, but that there “are two sides to the game,” and that Seattle has not been delivering on Side O. M’s catcher Tom Murphy expanded.
“Relying on winning one-run games, low-scoring ballgames — that’s a hard way to live,” Murphy said, adding that the Mariners’ record “speaks for itself.” “Every day coming into the park, it feels like it’s do-or-die. It really does at this point of the season, which is a grinding way to play.”
Of course, those were pretty tame comments compared to what fellow Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh said after Tuesday’s loss. The launcher of one of the most iconic home runs in Mariners history told reporters, “We’re not a good baseball team right now. Straight up. It’s nice and all the good vibes and whatever, but we’re not playing well right now and we know it and we got to pick it up.”
There was some press-box chatter Wednesday about whether it would be appropriate for the Mariners to keep dancing after wins, or celebrating home runs with the trident, or blaring John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” throughout the stadium given their struggles. I say it’s fine to continue with all that — it’s just baseball, and joy and entertainment should triumph above all else.
But that doesn’t mean this team’s shortcomings aren’t sullying the summer for its most ardent supporters. The Mariners were supposed to be good. They’ve been anything but.
“You can’t fake it. It is what it is. I don’t think, in general, we’re a bad baseball team at all. I know what we’re capable of,” said Mariners pitcher Logan Gilbert, who gave up four runs in six innings Wednesday. “We have what it takes, and that’s why we feel the frustration of the fans and everybody of the situation that we’re in.”
Crisis point. With the best team in the AL coming to town Friday.
Reality makes you wonder if they’re already history.
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