Mariners do everything they can to lose, but still win

The Mariners did exactly what the headline says they did. They tried to get too much out of Erasmo Ramirez, tried to get too much out of Casey Lawrence, and then, thanks to a seemingly imaginary balk, let the Rangers pull within one run before deciding to slam the door on them.

But honestly, the close call wasn’t on the Mariners, it was just a rough night for Scott Servais. On nights like these, he reminds you that he’s just a second year manager. The hard part for the Mariners, they can’t afford losses that stem from managerial errors. They can’t win every game, but they should definitely win the ones where they score eight runs. Thanks to overaggressive decisions from the skipper Tuesday night, they almost let it get away.

I for one am not thrilled with Erasmo Ramirez as the Mariners fifth starter. If it was a one-time fill-in, I will stomach it, but I really do not hope to see him atop the hill in the bottom of the first next Sunday in Kansas City. That game has massive playoff implications, and the Mariners can ill-afford to have an unqualified starter on the mound.

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That little editorial bit aside, Tuesday night, the Mariners got three solid innings from Ramirez. That’s been essentially his cap this year. After that, he gets really hittable really fast, and things can start to go downhill.

That is what happened in the fourth inning of Tuesday’s game. After an error put Adrian Beltre on, Roughned Odor hit his 24th homer to cut the deficit to 3. Then Joey Gallo turned a meatball from Ramirez into a 456-foot blast to make it 5-3. The Mariners would add three more runs though, and thankfully they did that, because Servais tested the limits again in the sixth.

After getting 2.0 perfect innings out of Casey Lawrence, the wheels fell off. Single, Single, homer, and the game was now 8-6. If you look at Lawrence’s game logs this year, any outing over 2 innings automatically results in runs. He’s been really mediocre in all his appearances this year, but trying to stretch him probably wasn’t Servais’s best move.

Yet, Lawrence worked out of it, Rzepczynski got a call and did his job, Zych did fine, and once you got to Vincent and Diaz, the game was pretty much over.

We won’t even talk about the run the Rangers got that cut it to 8-7. It was an iffy balk, and we’ll forgive it, but it’s easy to forgive when we win, had poor managerial decisions led to that run mattering, we’d be sitting a lot differently.

Next: Mariners complete unlikely comeback, beat Rangers

In all, the Mariners offense had a great night, and as negative as this piece is, no one can deny Seattle is playing very well at the moment, and is just 1.5 back of a wild card spot. A win against Texas on Wednesday would be huge for the M’s heading into the series with Kansas City, who currently occupies one of the wild card spots.