SEATTLE — Thanks to some relatively stable pitching and a lack of that same quality from the San Diego Padres, the Seattle Mariners were able to win the series on Wednesday night.
On the strength of four runs in four innings against Padres starter Yu Darvish — and primarily on the strength of Mariners slugger Eugenio Suárez, who hit a three-run home run in the fourth inning — the Mariners beat the Padres 4-3 on Wednesday in the finale of a three-game series that continued the American League team’s recent domination of the interleague “rivalry.”
The Padres actually had their best game among the three times they have faced Bryan Woo and were the first team in his 26 starts this season to get him out of a game before the sixth inning ended.
But two runs in the sixth inning against Woo and a run in the ninth against closer Andrés Muñoz left them a run short, as they lost to the Mariners for the fifth time in six games this season and 14th time in 18 games since the start of 2022.
On Wednesday, Darvish was coming off arguably his best start among the nine he had made since starting the season late due to an elbow issue. In his last start on Friday, he allowed the Dodgers a solo home run and no other baserunners over six innings.
After surrendering four hits and walking one against the Mariners, Darvish said, “The movement on the pitches, off-speed, it’s there. I feel good where I’m at.”
He entered Wednesday with a 1.04 ERA in four starts against the Mariners since he joined the Padres in 2021.
Suárez was the catalyst for changing that.
In the second inning, Suárez lined a one-out single softly to left field, stole second and scored when Luke Raley drove a full-count curveball to the gap in right-center field with two outs.
And after Julio Rodríguez singled and Josh Naylor walked to start the fourth, Suárez launched a home run over the left field wall on a first-pitch cutter in the heart of the strike zone, giving the Mariners their 4-0 advantage.
“I hate to keep saying this, but it is that one pitch that cost me,” Darvish said. “… When I’m good, even if you make a mistake, they would foul it off. But an instance like today, I make that one mistake, and they get all of it.”
From there, it was a largely familiar path for the Padres against Woo.
Unlike Monday’s 9-6 defeat, Wednesday went down more like how they have usually lost to the Mariners over the past four seasons. That is to say, they were held down by an excellent starting pitcher.
The 25-year-old Woo lowered his ERA slightly to 2.95 and saw his WHIP inflate a hundredth of a point to 0.95.
The Mariners taking two of three this week follows their sweep at Petco Park in May in which the Padres scored a total of three runs.
One of those games was started by Woo, who allowed a single run over seven innings.
His only other start against the Padres had come here last September. That night, he took a perfect game into the seventh inning before Fernando Tatis Jr. hit a home run and the Padres ended up scoring two runs before Woo departed with two outs.
Wednesday, the Padres had three singles and a walk in the first five innings before scoring twice in the sixth.
The second run in that inning scored after Woo left with the bases loaded and reliever Gabe Speier promptly hit Jake Cronenworth.
With six singles and a walk, the Padres had two more baserunners Wednesday than in either of the first two starts Woo made against them.
After going down in order against Matt Brash in the seventh and Eduard Bazardo in the eighth, doubles by Cronenworth and Tatis off Muñoz got the Padres to within a run in the ninth before Ramón Laureano grounded out to end the game.
That left the Padres in danger of falling two games back in the National League West, pending the Dodgers’ result against the Reds on Wednesday night, and it kept the Mariners at least three games up on the Royals in the race for the American League’s final wild-card spot.
“Two really good teams,” Shildt said. “Just went toe to toe. Some big swings were the determination on both sides of it, quite frankly. But man, hard fought. I mean, I love this team so much — the way they compete, the way they’re getting after it. Went toe to toe and outside of one big swing, I thought we played a really good baseball game.”
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