The Seattle Mariners have been swept by the Houston Astros. This is a sentence that we have written/read/uttered before. Some years it seemed impossible to happen, other years it seemed impossible to not happen. Then there are times where a team just has another teams number. This is one of those times.
Wade LeBlanc got off to a rough start. The first inning was particularly telling when he walked Luis Valbuena on a 3-2 pitch, then gave up a single to Jose Altuve after falling behind in the count. Eventually, he gave up a big two run double to Carlos Gomez with two outs (so what?) His command was a little spotty and when he got the ball over the plate, the Astros made him pay.
After being behind 5-0, the Mariners decided to muscle up and cut the deficit down to 1. Home runs from Robinson Cano, Kyle Seager and Dae-Ho Lee turned it into a ballgame. Cano hit his 20th of the year, I believe he reached 20 last year in September so this is very promising and is as good as a time as any to appreciate how good he has been this year.
The Astros extended the lead a little further to 7-4. This is when our car broke down on I-5. We were lost, scared, and stranded and we needed help. That's when we realized that we didn't need AAA because the All Star Dad, Seth Smith arrived just in time to bail us out with an opposite field three run home run.
We should probably talk for a second about Edwin Diaz. The elephant in the room tonight is that he did give up the deciding dinger to Luis Valbuena, but when you play the Astros, everybody does that at least once. It's a rite of passage at this point. But I just wanted to talk about how unreal that he had recorded 11 consecutive outs as strike outs. This is impressive and it's hard to not be impressed with what he's been doing so far. He's been nails and has taken the ball and ran with every opportunity that Servais has given him. A 96 MPH fastball down broadway notwithstanding.
Tomorrow the Mariners head to Kansas City where I'm sure the Root Sports crew will show us clips of people manning the grill for that famous KC BBQ and everyone is going to talk about how hot outside it is there. James Paxton hops on the mound to try and end the losing streak against the cartoonishly named Danny Duffy.