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SEATTLE — The frustration and anger pulsed through Marco Gonzales’ body. All the pitches that avoided their expected and proper location, all the subsequent hits allowed, all the runs scored from those hits, all the losing, so much damn losing.
Beneath Gonzales’ boy-next-door appearance is a vicious and aggressive competitor. And as he stood in the dugout watching an awful game turn unwatchable, Gonzales paced the dugout, glaring at the world, eventually kicking a garbage can over when one of the runners that he’d left on base scored.
A few teammates and staff members heard the incident and looked back at Gonzales briefly, but knew it was best to let him be. Eventually, Gonzales stopped his walk of irritation and stood with hips on hands, watching his team slog through yet another loss before exiting the dugout.
Gonzales endured yet another brutal outing in a stretch that has featured too many suboptimal starts. A seven-run second inning submarined the Mariners’ victory hopes early in what ended up being a 13-3 rout.
After starting the season 5-0 with his team winning six of his first seven starts, the Mariners have suffered defeats in his last seven starts with Gonzales being charged with the loss in six of them.
Over those even starts, he’s pitched 32 1/3 innings, allowing 44 hits, 37 runs, 28 earned runs for a 7.79 earned-run average along with 13 walks and 17 strikeouts.
On Sunday, he was tagged for 10 runs on nine hits in 4 2/3 innings. He was the first pitcher in Mariners history to win five games before May, but is 0-6 with a 7.79 ERA in his past seven starts.
“The way I pitched is just unacceptable,” Gonzales said. “I did not give my team a chance to win and I exposed our bullpen way too early. There’s a lot of things I need to work on. First and foremost, I need to take accountability for that. I need to help this team win.”
Much like Gonzales, the Mariners started the season strong at 13-2 and in first place in the AL West, but now sit at the bottom of the division standings at 25-37.
“I’m not going to point any fingers besides toward myself,” Gonzales said. “I think it starts with the guys on the mound, it starts with the starting pitching. It hasn’t been up to par. For us to go out and set the tone, I don’t care how well we hit, we’re not going to do what we want to do.”
The second inning Sunday was an interminable mess. The Angels sent 11 batters to the plate, scoring seven runs on five hits and that’s with Gonzales striki9ng out Cesar Puello to start the inning. With one out, he allowed a single, hit a batter, gave up a bloop RBI double to Brian Goodwin, watched shortstop Dylan Moore make a failed decision to try to get an out at third base instead of taking a routine out at first base, gave up another RBI double, a sacrifice fly and served up a three-run homer to Albert Pujols.
The Mariners got two of their three runs in the game back in the bottom of the inning to try and give the score some semblance of respectability and perhaps start some sort of protracted rally. But it never happened.
To Gonzales’ credit, he worked the next two innings scoreless, but never made it out of the fifth, exiting with two outs and the bases loaded and his pitch total at 95.
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