Mariners Lose Big 8-2 Against Struggling Texas Rangers

The Mariners faced a much greater challenge today against the Texas Rangers than they were probably expecting. The struggling Rangers were able to confuse the M’s batters and pitchers in the M’s 8-2 loss versus their AL West division rival.

Coming into today’s ballgame the Mariners probably had all the confidence in the world.

They had one of the best records in the Cactus League, they were scoring runs better than any of the team in the Cactus League and they were facing one of the worst teams in either spring training league in the 1-6 Texas Rangers.

All of that confidence faded quickly as the Rangers ran roughshod over each of the Mariners pitchers that were sent to the mound minus Marc Rzepczynski who has had the worst outing of any M’s pitcher all spring so far.

If you remember, last week against the Kansas City Royals, Rzepczynski was shelled for five ER on two home runs while also giving up a walk in two innings of work.

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This time it was Hisashi Iwakuma, Nick Vincent, Dillion Overton, Ryan Weber, and Dan Altavilla who all allowed at least one run. Altavilla was hit the worst by the Rangers batters surrendering three runs on two hits and giving up two walks in two innings pitched.

The bats weren’t any help to the pitching staff on this day despite averaging 8.3 runs coming into the duel. 5-16 players got a hit, but when you take away Jarrod Dyson’s 2-3 day with a triple and RBI and Mitch Haniger’s 2-3 with a solo home run, the M’s were completely shut down. The rest of the lineup went 4-29 (.137) with no runs scored and struck out four times.

But even Haniger and Dyson had their own slip-ups. Both of them committed throwing errors. The two errors added to the four that had been committed in the combined six games prior to this affair.

Next: O'Malley Having Great Spring

The Mariners will look to redeem themselves tomorrow against the Colorado Rockies at 12:10 PST.