O’s Bats Go Solo; M’s O a No-Show

This game was very nearly cancelled due to rain.

For the Seattle Mariners offense, from Orioles starter Dylan Bundy’s first pitch to his last, it might as well have been.

Yeah.

The 24-year-old righty had been the Orioles’ best pitcher coming into the game, posting a 2.57 FIP across 27 innings in August, bolstered by a K/9 of 11.

And today, in front of a crowd of approximately nineteen people, (not including the concessions rats) Bundy rained fire on the Mariners’ ranks like his middle name was Stormborn, seamlessly mixing a well-located fastball with an effective changeup, then polishing hitters off left and right with a devastating curveball and slider.

After sifting through the charred wreckage, the M’s found themselves with a 12-strikeout one-hit annihilation on their hands.

Meanwhile, M’s starter Erasmo Ramírez (who has been no slouch himself this month) did everything he could to keep his team in the game, contributing 7 strikeouts in 6 innings, the only runs coming off a pair of solo homers to Jonathan Schoop and Manny Machado, both of which barely escaped the diminutive confines of Camden Yards.

The Orioles would later tack on a couple more solo homers (a second from Machado and one from Welington Castillo) against James Pazos and Casey Lawrence respectively, but at that point it hardly mattered—the M’s bats were still flailing in the clutches of a borderline-airbending Dylan Bundy.

And the really sad part is it wasn’t even close.

Guillermo Heredia and Mike Zunino each struck out twice (though Zunino did throw out two baserunners, yay small victories), while Danny Valencia struck out four times. In fact, the only members of the Mariners lineup who didn’t strike out were Nelson Cruz and Kyle Seager, the latter of whom collected the team’s only hit:

At the end of the day, however, the Mariners simply had no answer for Dylan Bundy.

You give yourself a decent chance to win baseball games only allowing solo homers, and credit to Erasmo Ramírez and the Mariners pen for limiting the damage on a day when nothing could go right. But you better believe the Mariners are winless this year when scoring 0 runs.

Derik Hamilton-USA TODAY Sports

At least it wasn’t a no-hitter.