SEATTLE — There have been dismal times in the history of the Seattle Mariners, but most of those were in the early years when expectations were low and their failures occasionally were laughable.
Right now, this isn’t laughable.
The Mariners lost 6-2 Sunday to the Washington Nationals at Safeco Field, completing a three-game sweep against the worst team in the National League.
The Mariners, once a team of high expectations but now the worst in baseball at 24-45, again did little offensively and were held to two runs for the second straight game. This time, they needed six hits and three Nationals errors to score that many.
“I don’t think it’s possible to play this bad for an entire season,” said left-hander Jarrod Washburn, who held the Nationals to six hits and two runs before he was pulled two hitters into the seventh inning. “We’ve got to dig down deep and see what we’re made of and try to salvage the season as much as possible and save face a little bit.
“It’s embarrassing. We thought we were good. We thought we could compete. We’re not doing it.”
One week after hitting coach Jeff Pentland lost his job, there’s hardly a player in the clubhouse who’d be surprised if the past weekend doesn’t lead to more personnel changes.
“I’ve never been through anything like this,” said relief pitcher Mark Lowe, who gave up a three-run homer in the eighth inning to Kory Casto, breaking a 2-2 tie. “I’ve never been on a team that went the whole season where at some point they didn’t string some wins together.”
Instead, the Mariners have strung together losses — seven straight at home for the first time since 1996. The Mariners, who haven’t won back-to-back games since late last month, have lost 10 of their past 13.
“We’re not playing good baseball and we haven’t shown any signs of turning it around,” Washburn said. “I’ve been on bad teams before, teams that lost a lot. But those teams weren’t expected to compete and do well. We had high expectations for ourselves and we fully expected to be competing for the division and get to the playoffs. We had the talent to do it, and we’re just not doing it.”
Sunday’s game got away in the eighth when Aaron Boone hit a leadoff double and Felipe Lopez reached on a sacrifice bunt when Lowe’s throw to third was too late to get Boone.
Casto, a native of Salem, Ore., who played college ball at Portland, then hit a 1-0 fastball for a towering fly that dropped to the foul side of the right-field foul pole. First-base umpire D.J. Reyburn signaled it was a home run, drawing an immediate protest from right fielder Jeremy Reed.
“I thought it was foul because it landed on the other side,” Reed said.
He didn’t see what the umpires saw and TV replays showed — that the ball grazed the foul pole.
Home run, the first of Casto’s career.
Three-run Nationals lead.
Another disheartening defeat for the Mariners, who can’t explain why the season has turned into this.
“We’re all thinking about the solution,” center fielder Ichiro Suzuki said. “It’s not like we’re not thinking. But we just can’t find the answer. We’re not clicking. I don’t believe that we’re just here to wear our uniforms day in and day out. We play for a reason.
“We shouldn’t care about the opponent. We have to perform for ourselves — focus each day, each game and the next game from there on. Say, for instance, not even have the TV on or worry about where the other teams are (in the standings). It’s something that’s useless for us because we have to do something to change it. We have to perform in order to compete.”
Read Kirby Arnold’s blog on the Mariners at www.heraldnet.com
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