KANSAS CITY — Failure and defeat are embedded into a baseball season. It’s the nature of a 162-game schedule and the avalanche of opportunities afforded players over the accumulation of all those games.
While defeat is an undesirable outcome in any game, it also isn’t unexpected given that nearly every team will lose a minimum of 60 games.
But how a team loses a game or games can be more indicative of its actual wherewithal for success than the games won.
With the exception of Colt Emerson’s stellar performance, going 4-for-4 with three doubles, just about everything else in Sunday’s disappointing 8-6 loss to the Royals felt frustratingly familiar in what has been a largely underachieving performance over the first 54 games.
Seattle scored three runs in the top of the ninth to make the final score seem respectable and allowed manager Dan Wilson to laud the at-bats and say his guys “battled.”
But for those that sat through the nine innings either by force or by regrettable choice, they know it wasn’t a game the Mariners deserved to win. They lost two of three to a team that had lost nine of its last 10 games coming into the weekend series. Kansas City won back-to-back games for the first time since May 8-9 and finished 5-1 vs. the Mariners this season.
“Tough day all around, tough way to end the series here,” Wilson said. “It’s not how we wanted it to go at all, but again, we’ve got to turn the page quickly and get ready for where we’re headed.”
The Mariners, now 25-29, will travel to scenic Sacramento to face the A’s, who lead the AL West’s war of attrition and mediocrity.
After eking out a somewhat unimpressive 2-0 win Friday night over a struggling Royals squad, Wilson talked about winning the series immediately the next day, hoping to build some consistency.
Instead, the Mariners were held scoreless over nine innings Saturday by a pitcher that was once in their organization.
On a gorgeous sun-drenched Sunday afternoon, they tossed out a clunker that looked more Cactus League than big league. They were sloppy in the field, committing three errors, carelessly overaggressive at the plate and hapless in their execution. Throw in some curious decision-making and you have all the components for a disjointed loss.
Usually these sort of stretches result in a team meeting to clear the air. The Mariners already held that meeting the day after being swept by the Padres on the previous homestand. Fittingly, they are 3-3 since then, having won a series vs. the White Sox and dropping a series vs. K.C.
“This is baseball at times,” Wilson said of the struggles. “We feel like we’ve got to weather the storm and get through it to where we can get to consistent baseball.”
The game started off promising with Julio Rodríguez launching a solo homer to left field off Royals starter Seth Lugo in the first inning.
Seattle starter Bryan Woo worked the first four innings without a run. Though it wasn’t easy with the Royals extending at-bats with numerous foul balls. His defense forced him to throw extra pitches and allowed unnecessary baserunners with miscues in the field. HIs only clean inning was the first.
Woo’s outing fell apart in the fifth. He issued a leadoff walk to Michael Massey and then committed a throwing error after fielding Kyle Isbel’s 2-2 sac bunt, putting runners on second and third with no outs.
“It was a good bunt and I tried to make a play and threw it away,” Woo said .
Woo, who is former college infielder and an outstanding fielder, had to hurry the throw a little more than desired with Isbel’s speed. It went past Josh Naylor at first and out of the reach of Cole Young, who was backing up on the play. Putting the ball in his pocket wasn’t an option.
“I’m a competitor,” he said. “I want to make the play and I want to make the out. There are probably some times you need to be smart about it. But I’m always going to try and make the play.”
Woo looked like he might escape the trouble, retiring Maikel Garcia with a groundball to third and getting Bobby Witt Jr. to pop out to shallow center.
It brought to the plate Vinnie Pasquantino, who is having an suboptimal season in situational hitting. Coming into the game, he had a .125/.222/125 slash line with two outs and runners in scoring position. In 27 plate appearances, he has three hits with three walks and eight strikeouts.
But when Woo fell behind 2-0, Wilson signaled to have Pasquantino intentionally walked to load the bases and bring Salavdor Perez to the plate.
“We talked about it on the bench, that if we’d gotten behind on him, we would put him on there and go after Salvy with a fresh count,” Wilson said.
Woo was unaware of that strategy.
“I didn’t know they were going to do that,” Woo said, letting out a long sigh. “It is what it is. It’s on me for falling behind, 2-0. If I get ahead and attack, and you’re in a good count then you don’t have to walk him, but I fall behind and it happens. It was my job to go get Salvy out. I didn’t do that.”
Perez, who is also struggling to produce at the plate this season, had hit hit the ball hard off Woo in his two previous trip to the plate, including a single. He jumped on a first pitch sinker and laced through the left side. for a 2-1 lead.
With Jose A. Ferrer up and ready in the bullpen, Wilson didn’t get his best lefty to face the left-handed hitting Carter Jensen, who has a career .191 batting average against lefties in 53 plate appearances. He opted to stay with Woo. Jensen lifted a high fly ball to left field. Randy Arozarena initially judged the ball, but he kept back pedaling as it started to drift toward the wall instead of turning and running to the wall. Arozarena’s backpedaled was stopped by the all and ball hit off the wall above him, ricocheting away for a two-run double to make it 4-1.
“Off the bat, I thought it was a pretty routine fly ball,” Wilson said. “It looked like the wind was pushing the ball and it kept going.”
Should it have been a catch? It’s difficult to say. But the attempt was certainly lacking.
Woo still shouldered all the blame.
“The fifth was completely on me,” Woo said. “I take full responsibility for how that inning went.”
The top of the sixth inning started with Rodriguez getting dinged with a pitch clock violation as he was trying to get his batting helmet and protective gear on late before coming to the plate.
“Honestly, it was such a long inning and I was just really focused on defense in that (fifth) inning,” he said. “I forgot that I was the leadoff hitter. It happens.”
Rodriguez put together a 10-pitch at-bat before flying out to right field. It was more pitches than the Mariners saw from Seth Lugo in the first inning (seven), second inning (six) and fourth (six).
Down 5-1 in the seventh, Emerson singled to right field to score Dom Canzone and J.P. Crawford added a RBI single to cut the lead to 5-3. But Kansas City tacked on another run in the bottom of the inning off Cooper Criswell and two more off Alex Hoppe in the eighth.
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