Taijuan a mess, Mariners steamrolled by Angels, 10-3

Well, yikes.

It wasn't pretty. But then again, somehow, in some sick kind of way, it was to be expected. Others have said it before, but it bears repeating: when the book is finally closed on this season, we're going to look back at that brutal 1-6 road trip as the final stake in the heart of a vampire playoff run that probably should have died sometime earlier. That could be true, but in another way, I think it's wrong: you see, It happened countless times this season. It happened last night. You know exactly what I'm talking about, one of those weird moments when there is a tear in the fabric of reality, where time stops and the very stuff that makes up the physical matter of the universe decides to shuffle itself around and just break apart in front of your very eyes. Aoki's misplayed catch against the Brewers, for one. This, for another:

In like, ten minutes, mind you! Walker dug a hole and then kept digging, with that expressionless face of his which seemed to be responding to a bad grade on a test rather than a situation over which he still had agency. And so the quest continues: the third head of cerberus, the one with the freakish talent scooped seemingly out of thin air and plopped down on a baseball diamond for the first time late in life, the once-untouchable heir to the throne of the King, well...that guy was undone by one errant pitch to start off the entire game.

But on the other hand, you kind of have to feel it's time for something drastic in this situation. Once again, Taijuan threw only three offspeed pitches out of 43. His velocity was hungover, stumbling between 92 and, occasionally, 95. His splitter was sipping bloody marys in the 80s with Jered Weaver. You have to feel bad for the kid, but in another way it honestly seems like he just doesn't know how to make adjustments after handling (on field) adversity for the first time in his career, which he almost stumbled into after discovering The Secret hidden in a wooden chest in the basement maze of the castle or something. Far be it for me to say what the Mariners Should Do in a brief (and late) recap of a 10-3 dungheap of a baseball game, but I will say that his one remaining year of options makes for a much more appealing trade candidate than someone whose price tag reads "Uh, maybe stick him in your bullpen!" But anyway.

It wasn't all doom and gloom. After Guti hit a colossal dinger (that he thought was a pop up) in the second, Robinson Cano stood in the box and did this:

Only three other players in the history of the game also have twelve-straight seasons of 30 or more doubles, and one of them is named Honus Wagner. The fun part of this is that we get to watch a hall-of-fame talent do his thing even while the rest of his team leaves their pants in the dugout every other day. The scary part is the first ten words of this paragraph, because that number sure is going to look like a solar eclipse as Cano climbs higher into his thirties. Uhhhh...I mean...HERE HAVE A GOOD FEEL!

Today they will be back at it looking to take the series from the Angels with Kuma on the mound. Servais somehow managed to only burn through three relievers in 8.1 innings of toxic waste cleanup last night, but it sure would be nice to see the bear go through seven and reset this thing before the Rangers come to town. Because well, you know.