Mariners go from the Good Place to the Bad Place, lose to A’s 1-8

After a night of fun, a night of yikes

In yesterday’s recap, I examined the Mariners and A’s as two upstart teams, having asked Scott Servais a question pregame about if he’d ever played on a team like the 2024 Oakland A’s: Plucky Overperformers. The Mariners crushed the A’s 8-1, seemingly answering the question about where each team was on their developmental curve. However, tonight the script reversed, with the A’s hammering the Mariners by the same score, creating an unpleasant mirror image of last night’s game.

About the only good thing to be said about tonight’s Mariner game is that is was short, clocking in at a lean two hours, twenty-one minutes. Other than that it was a frustrating game filled with the Mariners hitting balls hard but for outs, poorly executed at-bats, and another bullpen meltdown that put the game actually out of reach (8-1), as opposed to just feeling out of reach at 2-1, where the game remained from the fourth to the eighth innings.

“It happens,” said Scott Servais postgame, naming Julio Rodríguez, Mitch Garver, and Luke Raley, all of whom had hard-hit balls that went for outs. “Some nights you do hit some balls hard, you can’t control it once it leaves your bat.”

Despite getting some solid contact, the Mariners largely struggled against Joey Estes, who they had roughed up pretty well in a previous meeting last September. Cal Raleigh, at least, remembered that, homering off Estes for the second time already:

That was Cal ambushing a first-pitch cutter, and while that worked out well, other times it did not. The Mariners’ approach was to be aggressive against Estes on the fastball, but thanks to some ineffectiveness and some bad batted-ball luck, that approach didn’t result in runs for the Mariners. Estes didn’t get into a three-ball count until the fifth inning, when Jorge Polanco worked a full count and finally doubled on the seventh pitch of the at-bat. However, Ty France went after a changeup in a 2-0 count and grounded out, and Luke Raley, in a 1-1 count, went after an inside fastball to do the same and end the inning stranding Polanco on second. This is not learning, fellas!

The Mariners had another chance in the sixth, and wouldn’t you know it, also after they had worked their second full count of the game, with Josh Rojas battling in a ten-pitch at-bat and eventually being rewarded with a line drive base hit. However, Julio then effectively made two outs in the inning, grounding out on the third pitch of his at-bat to force out Rojas and then getting caught stealing second when he overslid the base. Servais noted postgame that, because he’s so big and so fast, Julio’s momentum can sometimes carry him over the bag, which is something that he’ll have to continue to refine, as he won’t be going back to sliding headfirst due to injury concern. Overall, Servais was effusive in his praise of Julio postgame, saying his timing looks as good as it has for the past two weeks. Also, Julio did lay off the first pitch of an at-bat twice tonight, both times when Estes tried to bust him inside with a fastball to start off the at-bat, so that’s a nice adjustment to see.

Unfortunately, as is so often the case when the offense is scuffling like tonight, the smallest mistakes by the starting pitcher make a tremendous difference in the game. Bryce Miller was not his sharpest self tonight, which you probably wouldn’t know if you looked at just the box score: he struck out nine and only allowed two runs over six innings, but he was also inefficient with his pitches at times, getting into some bad counts.

“Bryce is such a rhythm pitcher with his fastballs,” said Servais postgame. “And once he gets going with his fastballs, then the secondaries will really play well off of that. But it didn’t really look like he was in sync command-wise tonight,” noting that he was throwing enough strikes but not really dominating the zone.

Miller was uncharacteristically poor at times at getting first pitch strikes tonight, throwing just three of seven first pitch strikes in that long third inning, although he did get more crisp as he went deeper into the game—going from eight of fourteen first-pitch strikes in the first three innings to eight of eleven over his final three innings. an adjustment we’ve seen Miller make many times. On a night when the team needed him to go long after Woo’s shortened start last night, he did make it six innings, but some more pitch efficiency might have helped save the ‘pen tonight from having to cover too many innings, as that is when the game really got out of hand.

Ryne Stanek pitched a clean seventh but gave up a leadoff double to start the eighth, at which point Servais summoned Gabe Speier from the ‘pen. The A’s bunted the runner over to third, but Speier then walked the next batter, Brent Rooker, who then stole second, meaning if the Mariners were trying to pitch around Rooker and set up a double play, well, that strategy didn’t pay off. The A’s pinch-hit J.D. Davis for rookie Tyler Soderstrom, who struck out swinging, and then pinch-hit Shea Langeliers for catcher Kyle McCann, who the Mariners intentionally walked to load the bases. That brought up Max Schuemann, the light-hitting shortstop, who immediately flicked a slider into left field for a three-RBI double.

Eduard Bazardo, working mop-up duty, walked the first batter he saw, and gave up a base hit to the next; the A’s then bunted for their second sacrifice of the night, thrilling Thanksgiving uncles everywhere, and a wild pitch brought home yet another run and caused a good number of the 32,000-plus in attendance to stream for the exits. That stream increased when Bazardo gave up a two-run dinger to JJ Bleday, making it 1-8—an unpleasant reversal of last night’s fortunes.

With Bazardo putting the game out of reach, the A’s were able to sit down super-reliever Mason Miller and bring out Michael Kelly instead. Kelly struck out Julio to end the game, adding a stinging coda to a frustrating evening. However, Servais was optimistic about what he saw from his club process-wise, and specifically from Julio:

“I really like what I saw from Julio tonight. He was out here early today, put a lot of extra work in, which is going to pay off for him. There’s no question about it. Unfortunately tonight, didn’t get the results. It’ll come. We’ll come back tomorrow with a good chance to win the series, and that’s the goal.”