Mariners Come at the King, Miss

Hello! Did you miss the Mariners game today? I will re-tell it to you using .gifs from the acclaimed HBO drama “The Wire” because the game was in Baltimore, you see.

So maybe you woke up this morning and forgot that the Mariners had another game today.

Lovely. Here we go again. Suddenly it’s the bottom of the second and Trey Mancini hits a solo home run and former Mariner and literal spawn of Satan Welington Castillo gets his first hit of FOUR for the day and O’s are up 2-0.

Then it’s the top of the third and the Mariners FINALLY CATCH ALL THE BREAKS as Nelson Cruz donks one off the second base bag for 2 runs. Tie game.

But it gets better! Mitch Haniger hits a 2 run double, and Mike Zunino bloops a fly ball that Adam Jones can’t get to. 6-2 Mariners!

Sweet, we’re on top of the world! Makin’ it rain! What could go.....hahaha shut up, brain. Back to back homers in the bottom of the fouth by Castillo and Craig Gentry make it 6-5. Will someone PLEASE tell Castillo that Jack Zduriencik is no longer employed by the Mariners.

Then Jonathan Schoop homers to tie it up 6-6 in the bottom of the fifth (coincidentally that’s the same place you’d find McNulty at this point if he were a Mariner fan). And then the Orioles take the lead 7-6 in the bottom of the sixth via a sacrifice fly from Manny Machado.

BUT THEN MITCH HANIGER TIED IT UP 7-7 WITH A SOLO DINGER IN THE TOP OF THE EIGHTH WOOOOOOOOO!!!!

Yeah, Lester. You’re right to be very cautiously optimistic, but still extremely suspicious of what’s happening. Oh look, another pitcher injury! RIP David Phelps, we hardly knew thee. Christian Bergman comes in to pitch the bottom of the eighth, and leaves with two men on base (Castillo’s final hateful dagger). Then Scott Servais brings in Marc Rzepczynski to pitch to RIGHT HANDED Jonathan Schoop, who promptly singles to plate the go-ahead run.

Jean Segura gets a pinch-hit single in the ninth but it was all for naught. The game stay the game and the brooms have been brandished, 8-7 Baltimore.

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So, this concludes the 12 game East Coast road trip that we’d all been dreading since the schedule was released. August and September are tough months for all MLB teams, and have been the undoing of recent Mariners teams in 2014 and 2016. It absolutely sucks that the team had one home stand in what is historically the best weather month of the year in Seattle. This is not the first raw deal handed to the Mariners by the MLB schedulers and it surely won’t be the last.

I was honestly surprised the team put up this much fight today after how tired and beaten they looked last night. Sure, they caught some breaks, but they took advantage of them and fully went for it. Mitch Haniger looked like the April fever dream we all remember. Miranda was serviceable, until he wasn’t.

We found out after the fact that Edwin Diaz was limited in his availability, hence the highly questionable bullpen management in the eighth inning.

Still, I’m not sure I see the downside of leaving Nick Vincent in there for at least a couple more outs with an off day tomorrow.

5-7 isn’t the worst thing that could have happened on this road trip, though. A strong home stand after a severely needed day off and they are right back in the mix of this stupid AL Wild Card race. Mike Leake was just acquired and instantly became the team’s second best starting pitcher. We’re rapidly approaching the end of this season, far faster than I would like despite how frustrating this team has been. Here’s to keeping the fight alive for just a few more weeks at least, you battered bastards of Mariners baseball.