DETROIT – For the first time in more than five years, the Seattle Mariners scored in each of their first five innings Saturday and yes, they still lost
That’s what Mariners baseball has become the past few weeks, when the team has dropped 13 of 14 games. No matter what they do right, everything else goes wrong.
This time, in a game they led only once 1-0 the Mariners were pounded by the Detroit Tigers, who won 12-6, to pull two games ahead of Seattle in the wild card race.
The collapse is becoming historic.
“The balance of the entire team is in shambles,” Ichiro Suzuki said. “I don’t have the words to express it. I thought everyone here was at the major league level I thought that’s why we were here.”
Almost certainly, it is going to cost people their jobs. That’s not fair, given the way the team played beyond expectations, but a late-season slump that has all but stolen meaningful games from Seattle’s home September schedule is going to catch the attention of ownership.
Someone and probably more than one someone is going to pay.
Start with general manager Bill Bavasi, who built an over-achieving team and watched it charge into contention only to watch it spiral to the point where the Mariners must now finish the season 7-15 or end up under .500.
Then there’s manager John McLaren, who took over for Mike Hargrove, who resigned on July 2 with a 45-33 record. The team endured a seven-game losing streak, rallied and then burrowed into its current stretch and is now 29-33 under McLaren.
If Bavasi and McLaren go, the coaching goes with them.
“My wife asked me today, ‘Are you going to have a job next year?’” one Mariners coach said Saturday. “I told her, ‘I don’t know. We’ve played so well for so much of the season, but if we keep losing … who knows?’”
Who knows, indeed.
During their 1-13 run, the Mariners have lost one-run games and blowouts, lost by not scoring runs, by giving up far too many and by making too many mistakes.
On Saturday, they chased Tigers starting pitcher Nate Robertson after 423 innings, putting up five runs against him.
The rest of the night, Seattle added one.
Jeff Weaver no, he won’t be back in ‘08 made his 23rd start of the season and with it gave up seven runs in five innings, taking his 12th loss.
Weaver hasn’t lasted more than five innings in any of his last three starts.
“He had good stuff tonight, a good sinker,” McLaren said. “But when he finds the center of the plate, bad things happen.”
Against Weaver, Detroit had nine hits. Every time the Mariners rallied to tie at 3-3, 4-4 and 5-5 Weaver gave the Tigers something back.
Adrian Beltre (No. 23) and Yuniesky Betancourt (No. 9) homered for the Mariners, and the offense scored in each of the first five innings for the first time since Aug. 6, 2001.
At that, they led once at 1-0.
Now, Seattle is five games out in the wild card race, two full games behind Detroit.
There are still ways by which the Mariners can make the post-season with 22 games left to play, but all of them involve winning games.
The Mariners haven’t done that win more than once in their past 14.
“There’s no other way to say it, this is a gut check for all of us,” McLaren said.
In a clubhouse numbed by what’s happened over the past 14 games, the Mariners can explain what’s gone wrong. What they can’t seem to do is end it, and they’ve fallen from a high of 20 games over .500 to their current record of 74-66.
Can whatever is wrong be changed in 22 games?
“I don’t know,” Suzuki said. “But we have to do it.”
“It’s a test for everyone, but no one on this team has given up,” McLaren insisted. “Felix (Hernandez) has been our stopper, and he’s going (today). We need a big win from Felix and then back to Seattle.”
To get that win, they’re going to need things they haven’t been getting and a little luck wouldn’t hurt, either.
“It’s baseball,” pitcher George Sherrill said. “You throw a pitch to strike someone out one week, and the next the same pitch gets hit out. You can’t explain that. Ground balls scoot down the line for doubles, but the same grounder is caught for a double play another night.
“That’s the way the game is. We’re just seeing everything possible go wrong in one stretch.”
Suzuki was asked if he’d ever seen a streak like this in Japan.
“I don’t think so,” he said, “and if I had, I don’t think I could forget it.”
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