Mariner fans know this much: when it rains, it pours.
For nine straight dreary nights in the Pacific Northwest, the playoff hopes of the Ichiro-led ballclub are quickly drowning in the ocean while they dropped from two games ahead of the rival Yankees in the wildcard race to two games behind them. In the AL West, they managed to lose a whopping 6.5 games to the Angels in that same time. Officially, it's nine straight losses and 10 out of their last 11 that is putting a damper on their chances for a playoff birth. It would be the club's first since Ichiro's arrival year in 2001. That year, they missed the World Series, despite a record 116-win season, thanks to the team they chase now: the Yankees.
The streak came with very little warning. The Mariners had just won seven out of eight games and were poised to take a four-game road series in Texas until standout third baseman Adrian Beltre made two costly errors late that amounted to four runs and the difference in a 5-3 loss. The team managed 11 hits even without Ichiro in the lineup, but stranded 13 runners in scoring position. The same score of 5-3 showed up the next day in Texas, as well.
Soon, the Mariners were getting embarrassed at home in the big showdown against division-leading Anaheim, giving up 24 runs over three games to a team not known for offense. In the closest game of that series, the Mariners' Jeff Weaver managed to cough up an early 5-0 lead, and reliever Brandon Morrow allowed a four-run rally in the eighth inning after the Angels had already tied the game. Even young phenom Felix Hernandez was not immune to pennant pressure as he gave up 6 runs on 13 hits in the third game as the Angels completed the sweep and perhaps ended the AL West race.
It was the bullpen's turn to fail again in a makeup game to Cleveland, blowing a seventh-inning lead and losing the game on a bases loaded walk issued to Kenny Lofton from minor-league call-up reliever Rick White. In Toronto, the pitcher's mound and Blue Jay second baseman Aaron Hill combined to rob the Mariners of extra innings on the game's last play. Raul Ibanez appeared to tie the game with a grounder that ricocheted off the mound and into the glove of a diving Hill, who somehow managed to turn a 4-6-3 double play.
When they finally got a quality start, in this case from Miguel Batista, they couldn't score runs, and lost 2-1 on an eighth-inning RBI single by Troy Glaus. The next day, the status quo returned and Jeff Weaver gave up five more early runs en route to a 6-4 loss, thus completing their nine-game slide.
While the Mariner bats have remained hot throughout, it has been mainly their pitching that has cost them game after game, both starters and relievers cost them ballgames, and only once in the streak did they surrender less than five runs.
In a crucial showdown at Yankee Stadium, the Mariners finally ended their slide with a 7-1 victory as Felix Hernandez returned to form, dominating his pinstriped opponents. The next night, however, the Yankees teed off on Mariner pitching to the tune of 12 runs, capped by seven runs in the seventh inning, surely the Seattle bullpen's crowning achievement of this devastating stretch.
With one game left against New York, the M's hope veteran Jarrod Washburn can come through in the finale and take the series. Either way, it will be a tough road the rest of the way as their remaining schedule includes three games in Detroit, four games in Anaheim, and four more against Cleveland.
Over the past three years, one quality AL team has badly swooned their way through September and yet managed to recover and play well in October (see Chicago White Sox: 2005, Detroit Tigers: 2006), however, neither of those teams needed to take out the Yankees in order to make the postseason. This Mariner team has not dominated throughout and does not intimidate on paper. They have been admittedly a streaky team throughout the season, and they will need one of their better ones for their remaining games if they want to see October baseball for the first time in six years.
And if not, the dreaded choke word, absent throughout this column up until now, will readily be applied.
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