Mariners fail to survive birdemic, lose 5-4

at least now the migration is over

The 2010 movie Birdemic, directed by James Nguyen, takes inspiration from the dual sources of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds and the documentary An Inconvenient Truth. It tells the story of a couple from southern California as the world is wracked with toxic evil bird attacks. The couple travels from town to town, fending off bird attacks before eventually the birds simply give up and fly off into the sunset. The film has become something of a cult classic on account of its abysmal quality. The acting is stiff and awful, the sound is of dubious quality, and the CGI - such that it is - looks taken out of a 2006 Honda commercial. Many people consider it to be the worst film ever made.

And I would still rather watch it than the back half of today’s Mariners game.

Let's get the hard facts out of the way first. The Mariners lost 5-4, and they did so after stranding the bases loaded for the last three innings in a row. The Mariners bats could not scrape together a single run against one of the worst bullpens in baseball. It’s rough. And it’s rough feeling this way. It’s rough watching this team right now. It’s rough how agonizingly close this ballgame was.

To illustrate, in the bottom of the ninth inning, after Cal Raleigh hit a one out single, Luke Raley flew a ball to deep left-center that landed just beyond Daulton Varsho. It landed hard on the dirt at the warning track and bounced over the wall for an automatic double. If it bounced just a little bit lower, Cal could have rounded third and won the game. Instead he was forced to hold up at third, with the inning ending with a Jorge Polanco pop out. It’s a game of inches.

I don’t want to cover the other two bases loaded, no runs innings. Suffice to say that, in the words of Scott Servais, the Mariners didn’t get the big hit today. And the Blue Jays did.

They got two big hits today. The first was a game-tying home run off the bat of George Springer in the 7th inning. George Kirby, who was excellent for the first six innings, nevertheless let the first two batters of the 7th reach base. That prompted Servais to call on Ryne Stanek to get out of the jam. Stanek managed to get Kiermaier out swinging, and then left a big ol’ spicy Italian meatball over the plate. Springer hasn’t been having a great year, but he is still George Springer and he still doesn’t miss these pitches.

Later, in the top of the 10th inning, the Mariners handed the ball to Colin Snider to keep the game tied despite the Manfred runner on second. After getting the first two outs on well hit balls to Dom Canzone in right, Snider left a meatball of his own over the plate for Menace of the Series Daulton Varsho. An easy line drive into right was enough to score Vlad Guerrero from second, the last run of the game.

That’s how the Mariners lost this game. They almost won it in a couple of ways. We’ve already mentioned the Luke Raley ground rule double, but that came after this pair of homers. In the 3rd inning, Victor Robles checked in with his first home run as a Mariner.

In the fifth inning, the Mariners actually threatened to look like a baseball team, when Dom Canzone hit a leadoff single, and was then moved over to second on when Robles laid down a sac bunt. Blue Jays starter José Berríos tried to make an aggressive play and throw Canzone out at second. Instead, he bonked the ball off his shoulder and it rolled away into center. Canzone and Robles both took advantage and advanced an extra base. Not getting that free out from Robles came back to bite Berríos when Mitch Garver got a hold of this 2-2 middle-middle changeup. Check the bat flip.

I’m choosing to end the recap here, with this Garver home run auto replaying on my second monitor because I like to leave you, dear reader, with a positive note. If we were to talk about the rest game, such as the fact that the Mariners struck out double digit times again, or the fact that four Mariners hitters had a WPA of at least -.200, we’d just make ourselves sad. And the Mariners don’t deserve that from us. Instead we simply won’t and will watch Garver’s bat flip again.

We can also take solace in knowing that we have collectively survived another Birdemic, that the Blue Jays who torment us so every year are flying off into the sunset.

And we can take solace in the fact that we didn’t make Birdemic.