SEATTLE — The low point for the Seattle Mariners of that madness came in the ninth.
With a largely Toronto Blue Jays crowd of 30,715 at Safeco Field continually chanting “Let’s go Blue Jays” as they tacked on three more runs, one frame after their 24-year-old lefty Ryan Borucki received a standing ovation as he walked off after a 1-2-3 eighth inning against the spiraling Seattle Mariners offense.
By the end, the majority of fans were not only applauding another Blue Jays victory, 7-2 over the Mariners, but Seattle left with its fourth consecutive loss.
The margin of error for Seattle Mariners pitching has slimmed to razor thin.
For the second consecutive start the Mariners turned to 26-year-old Marco Gonzales to get them back on the right track. He pitched seven innings for just the fifth time this season.
But the Blue Jays hit two home runs off of him and the Mariners made Borucki look like Chris Sale, one night after making signed-that-day right-hander Mike Hauschild look like Justin Verlander.
The Mariners scored one unearned run off of Borucki in eight innings before Ryon Healy’s RBI single scored Mitch Haniger off of former struggling Astros closer Ken Giles in the ninth.
The Mariners (63-47) bats had been hanging out in cold storage over the past month-plus, but they found their way to get to arctic temperature in this one.
Their one run on Borucki came gifted. Mitch Haniger took second base when a routine ground ball to shortstop Aledmys Diaz ended up sailing over first baseman Justin Smoak’s head.
Kyle Seager followed with his second hit, driving Haniger in with an RBI single to cut the Jays’ lead to 2-1 in the fourth.
But then the back-breaking two-run homer from Devon Travis off of Gonzales in the fifth before the Jays busted three more runs off of Chasen Bradford in the ninth, hours after Bradford was told to pack his stuff out of the clubhouse in Triple-A Tacoma to rejoin the Mariners after Juan Nicasio headed to the disabled list.
Actually, it didn’t start or end so optimally for the Mariners.
Two batters, one run. Randall Grichuk led off the game with a double down the first-base line off Gonzales and the next hitter, Devon Travis, brought him home with a single to left field.
Gonzales locked in with six strikeouts over the first three innings and then another to lead off the fourth. But he left a pair of cutters over the middle of the plate to Russell Martin, who hit the second over the left-field wall for a solo home run.
He should have sent Martin back to the dugout with a called strike three the pitch before, but umpire Mike Muchlinski called it ball three instead of what appeared to be strike three.
The next inning, Travis launched a two-run homer off Gonzales – just the third time in 22 starts Gonzales has allowed two or more home runs (also April 3 against the Giants and June 19 against the Yankees).
Meanwhile the Mariners offense kept doing what the Mariners offense has done over the past month-plus.
They had two hits through the first four innings, both from Kyle Seager, who drove in the only run with a single in the fourth to score Mitch Haniger from second base. Haniger only got there because Jays shortstop Aledmys Diaz gifted it to him with a high throw to first on a routine grounder.
The Mariners doubled their hit total off of Borucki, who was looking for his first career win, in the fifth when Jean Segura and Haniger hit back-to-back singles. But Nelson Cruz hit a soft fly out to first and Seager hit a hard line drive right at Gulchuk, the right-fielder.
The Mariners entered the game averaging 3.3 runs offensively since July 1, the lowest mark in the major leagues. And their pitching staff entered with a 4.70 ERA since July 4 – a span the Mariners had gone 8-15 in entering the game.
A few takeaways:
Seeing southpaws
The Jays started a 24-year-old rookie lefty, the Mariners their 26-year-old lefty.
But after the Mariners didn’t score a run against that-day-acquired right-hander Mike Hauschild, they scored one in seven innings against the lefty Ryan Borucki, who was looking for his first major league victory.
To Borucki’s credit, of the 2012 15th-round draft pick’s seven starts this year he’s allowed two runs or fewer in all but one of them (a three-inning outing against the Red Sox).
Gonzales looked sharp for most of this before sitting a cutter down the middle of the plate to Russell Martin in the fourth inning, though he should have had strike three the pitch before that was called ball three.
Gonzales lasted seven innings for the fifth time this season (and fifth time in his career). But the Jays hit two homers off of him, including a two-run shot in the fifth. That’s the third time this year in 22 starts he’s allowed two home runs or more.
He allowed seven hits, four runs, no walks with seven strikeouts.
Innings threshold
Gonzales’s seven innings pushed his season innings total to 132 2/3 innings.
His career-high for innings is 126 1/3 he threw last season, one year after sitting 2016 with Tommy John surgery.
But this wasn’t a strenuous seven innings. He needed just 83 pitches. That’s something the Mariners are monitoring as they play out these final two months of the regular season. Gonzales’ season ERA is 3.46.
