Mariners close out series finale against Cleveland with 3-6 loss

Smile because it’s over, cry because it happened

The good news is the Mariners are done playing the Guardians for the regular season. That means we can check off two of the peskiest teams of the AL Central, the Guardians and Royals, and at the end of the month will be done with the Twins, as well, leaving just the White Sox and two series against the Tigers. The bad news, of course, is that the Mariners lost today, 6-3, struggling once again to get much offense going while Luis Castillo struggled.

Things started off well for the Mariners, with J.P. Crawford singling to start the game, setting up Dylan Moore to absolutely destroy this baseball for a two-run home run:

But the bats slowed down after that, collecting just one more run on a Ryan Bliss double and getting nothing else done despite striking out as many times as they walked (5). Logan Allen didn’t pitch particularly well, but was able to get himself out of jams, showing why he has an ERA over 5 but an 8-3 record. Annoying. Allen performed his escape act over six innings before the bullpen took over, with rookie Cade Smith dominating over 1.2 innings, coming in to bail out Tim Herrin, who had allowed the first two batters to reach before recording an out. Dylan Moore giveth and Dylan Moore taketh, as he grounded into a double play, ending the inning and the Mariners’ best scoring threat of the game.

With the offense flat, Luis Castillo needed to be pinpoint perfect, and he was not. The plan with Castillo today appeared to be going changeup-heavy against the contact-oriented Guardians, but Castillo didn’t have a great handle on his changeup in the muggy Cleveland atmosphere, often leaving it up. After the Mariners struck first, Castillo wasn’t able to continue that momentum, giving one of those precious road runs right back after allowing the first two batters to reach; in retrospect, it’s lucky only one run scored, as Josh Naylor grounded into an inning-ending double play, but not before the run scored.

The Guardians then tied it up in the second, as Will Brennan turned on an inside fastball for a solo home run. Castillo looked like he was going to bounce back in the third and fourth, but the fifth inning sunk both him and the Mariners. With two outs, Castillo walked Steven Kwan, and then served up a changeup in the fat part of the plate for Andrés Gímenez for a two-run home run. Seeming to lose the handle on his pitches a little, Castillo then walked José Ramírez before again leaving a slider on the plate for Josh Naylor, who doubled home Ramírez.

In the eighth, Trent Thornton gave up a solo homer to Brennan, who seems to really see Mariners pitching well, to make it 6-3, but at that point the run was purely academic, as the Mariners lineup—missing two of their better bats in Luke Raley and Josh Rojas, with Cleveland neutralizing them with a bevy of left-handed pitching—failed to get anything going.

There’s been a lot of talk during this series about how the Mariners needed to take this series so they could have playoff positioning advantage over the Guardians, and when looking at games like this, that feels woefully cart-before-horsing. The Mariners have a dominant lead in the AL West, currently, but need to show more consistency—especially against clear postseason frontrunners like the Orioles, Yankees, and Guardians—to show they’re contenders and not pretenders.