M’s squander late rally, Astros even series

Yes, a right-hander started for the Mariners tonight but it wasn’t Mike Leake. Due to the former being out with illness, reliever Nick Vincent got the nod. Vincent pitched well in his brief outing, allowing only one hit through the first two innings.

The bigger pitching story was newest Mariners lefty Ross Detwiler. He hadn’t pitched at an MLB level in two seasons yet looked well-adapted as the master of double plays tonight. He also kept the hitting in the game, capped off by toning down a no-out, bases loaded rally with just a Correa sac fly allowed.

Holding that rally at large made a difference as bottom third, Kyle Seager “tied the game up” with his own bases-loaded situation. Despite striking out on a full count, Houston’s Max Stassi gave the home team a gift with a passed ball. Kyle’s disappointing season continues.

The defending champs scored just enough to beat their rivals at home as Reddick hit a tie-breaking, no-doubter to right to make it 2-1 and Yuli Gurriel added insurance a couple innings later with a seeing-eye RBI single.

Sadly, this was all the bad guys needed as our hitting couldn’t solve Astro’s, Framber Valdez. The rookie made the M’s look like rookies with an impressive zero earned runs allowed through four and one-third innings pitched.

And the hitting’s problem remains scoring early as their second run didn’t come until the eighth. The M’s appeared on their way to tying this contest up after Ben Gamel hit a beautiful seeing-eye grounder right over Yuli Gurriel.

That cut the deficit to 3-2 as the tying run sat on third base, less than two outs. In a frustrating chain of events, our rally was halted. Nellie struck out in a pinch-hitting situation to go 0-for-8 against Roberto Osuna.

Dee followed up shortly after with a rally-killing whiff of his own as he moves to an ugly below-.170 average with runners in scoring position. To add injury to insult, Dee may wake up sore tomorrow as he was beaned twice tonight.

The Mariner’s best friend, the one-run game, backfired on them tonight as they lost on that side of the coin. We do have a chance to take the series tomorrow as Marco faces off against Charlie Morton, 1:10 pm PT.