Mariners Blow it in the Tenth Inning

The Mariners are not the cream of the crop when it comes to offense. today’s showing was no exception to that recent trend. The Mariners rank 13th out of 14 AL teams in offensive output.

Erik Bedard pitched a good game, and handed the ball to Shawn Kelly, who has been outstanding with a 1.54 ERA so far.

Then that’s where everything started to unwind.

Kelly left the mound with a strained oblique three pitches into the 10th inning. The Mariners had recently won a 15-inning thriller against the Oakland Athletics. They had used a lot of arm power and because of the combination of fatigue and injuries to guys like CP Brandon Morrow, had to use Denny Stark.

Stark was making his third straight appearance, he got the first two batters out, but then the blowout ensued. He capped the night off with a Grand Slam HR hand fed to Jarrod Saltalamacchia.

The team with the fifth best ERA in all of baseball could not close it out again.

The offense needs to pick it up, the pitching staff can only keep this team on life support for so long. With an even mediocre offense, this team has playoff potential in the wide-open AL West, until then, get your oxygen masks on boys.