Grading the skidding Seattle Mariners' ugly 2-1 series loss vs. Washington Nationals

A fun fact about this week's three-game set between the Washington Nationals and Seattle Mariners is that the winning team scored exactly nine runs in all three games.

Of course, this fact is a lot less "fun" for Mariners fans. They were on the business ends of back-to-back pummelings by the Nationals on Wednesday and Thursday, resulting in a second straight series loss that has their lead over the Houston Astros in the AL West down to 0.5 games.

Thursday's loss was especially painful. The Mariners fought back from an early 2-0 deficit, but also lost J.P. Crawford in the sixth inning after he was ejected for (rightfully) arguing balls and strikes. In the end, the Mariners embarrassed themselves amid a seven-run top of the 10th for Washington.

All that's left to do now is perform an autopsy on the series for the Mariners. So, let's get our scalpels out and grade how the team performed in the three games.

Mariners vs. Nationals Breakdown and Grades: Series Results

• Tuesday, May 27: SEA 9, WAS 1
• Wednesday, May 28: SEA 0, WAS 9
• Thursday, May 29: SEA 3, WAS 9 (10)

Grading the Mariners’ Offense: D

It was Julio Rodríguez and Cal Raleigh who carried the M's to victory on Tuesday. They hit back-to-back home runs in the first inning, with Raleigh eventually adding another in the fifth. He now leads the American League with 19 home runs, while Rodríguez's 10 homers put him halfway to his total from last season.

There is nothing negative to say about Raleigh and Rodríguez right now. On the contrary, we wrote whole danged articles this week about how the former stands alone as the best catcher in MLB and about how the latter deserves praise for getting hot a lot sooner than he usually does.

As for the rest of the offense, well, let's just say nobody has any right to be surprised that Tuesday's nine-run, 12-hit outburst was followed by a total of 12 hits and three runs in the next two games.

The offense has been scoring only 3.5 runs per game since May 3. Rodríguez, Raleigh, and Randy Arozarena are the only lineup regulars with a wRC+ in the black (i.e., over 100) in this stretch, and Arozarena is barely there at 105.

Pretty much everyone else is cold, including guys who had helped carry the lineup in April. Most notably, Jorge Polanco has all but disappeared and Crawford has unfortunately stopped being an OBP machine since he moved into the leadoff spot.

Worse, pretty much anyone with swing-and-miss stuff feels like an instant death sentence for the Mariners offense. So much so that you could easily envision MacKenzie Gore dominating them even before he actually did with eight strikeouts over six scoreless innings on Thursday.

This is a lineup that is badly in need of upgrades, and preferably before the July 31 trade deadline. To this end, bangs on the door from Cole Young and Harry Ford are only getting louder.

Grading the Mariners’ Defense: C

Contrary to their previous series against the Astros, defense is not what caused the Mariners to lose this series.

Indeed, there were even some highlights in the field for the Mariners. Crawford seems to make at least one nifty pick on a ground ball per series at this point. Rodríguez had a tough sliding catch on Wednesday. And on Thursday, Leody Taveras preserved a 2-2 tie with a terrific throw home to nail Nathaniel Lowe.

However, the Nationals fared better when they tested Arozarena's arm in left field. He doesn't have a cannon out there, and the Nats put that front and center on run-scoring hits on Wednesday and again amid their explosive 10th inning on Thursday.

There was also a critical error by Collin Snider in that 10th inning, as he took a potential double-play grounder and threw it wide of second base to load the bases. A double and a home run followed, effectively putting the game out of reach.

The Mariners aren't necessarily a bad defensive team in a vacuum, but we pretty much have to grade on a curve here. Until the offense wakes back up, the defense simply can't afford to be handing opponents extra outs, much less extra runs.

Grading the Mariners’ Pitching: C

Though the Mariners gave up 19 runs throughout this series, most of the pitchers they ran out there did good work.

None more so than Logan Evans, who shined with eight innings of one-run ball on Tuesday. Some of that was owed to good fortune on the 11 hard-hit balls he gave up, but he was also around the strike zone (i.e., one walk) and he did a fine job of mixing his six pitches.

The Mariners also got yet another solid start from Emerson Hancock on Thursday, consisting of two runs allowed over 5.1 innings. He's now made eight starts since his recall on April 17 and all but one of them has seen him limit the damage with three or fewer runs allowed. Among other things, it's a testament to his improved fastball velocity at an average 94.8 mph.

The core members of Seattle's bullpen otherwise had a good series, and particularly on Thursday as Carlos Vargas, Matt Brash, and Andrés Muñoz put up zeroes to get the game to extra innings. Incredibly, Muñoz still has a 0.00 ERA after 24 appearances.

Alas, George Kirby really let the Mariners down on Wednesday. It was his second shaky performance in a row since coming off the IL last weekend, and this one was punctuated by three home runs. Two of those came off hanging breaking balls that had "hit me" written all over them, including James Wood's second blast of the series.

It's a good sign that Kirby's fastball velocity is virtually unchanged from last year at 95.9 mph. But he's clearly still shaking off rust. He also walked two batters in addition to giving up three homers on Wednesday, and that kind of nonsense just isn't what he's about when he's right.

As for what happened in the 10th inning on Thursday, let's just say Snider was doomed from the start.

He's the guy you bring in to face a row of right-handed batters, as he's actually fairly effective against them. But lefties have handled him to the tune of a .893 OPS for his career, so go figure that he had issues against a Nationals lineup that was literally all left-handers.

If anything, Snider's outing was worse than it looked. He only gave up one home run, but he also had three balls off him that sent Taveras to the warning track. Two landed for doubles, with the other producing a sacrifice fly.

Grading the Mariners’ Strategy: D

This is a mere nit-pick in the scheme of things, but it would have been cool if Dan Wilson had allowed Evans to go for the complete game on Tuesday.

The right-hander was only at 88 pitches, after all, and it's not as if the Mariners were clinging to a tight lead. But this is also just how it is with starting pitchers in this day and age, and even 88 pitches put Evans just four shy of his season-high of 92.

“I mean, of course,” Wilson said when asked if he considered sending Evans back out for the ninth, per Daniel Kramer of MLB.com, “But I think at the same time, he did a really nice job.”

The real sting came Wednesday, when the Mariners optioned Evans back to Tacoma so they could bring up Jackson Kowar. A bit cold, given the circumstances, but the M's need to start making room for Bryce Miller and Logan Gilbert. And besides, Kowar is a potential fan favorite in his own right.

Otherwise, the only game Wilson had a chance to impact in this series was Thursday's game. He tried to by shaking up the lineup, notably dropping Polanco to the seventh spot against the left-handed Gore. As nice as it is to see the M's regaining confidence in Polanco's ability to hit right-handed, it didn't work. His slump is ongoing, and the bunt he laid down with nobody out in a 2-2 game in the ninth is not what you'd call encouraging.

As to Wilson's pitching decisions on Thursday, lifting Hancock after only 65 pitches was questionable even if it meant arranging a left-on-left matchup with Gabe Speier against Wood. But Wood won the battle with a two-run double to bring his RBI count to six for the series.

As for Snider in the 10th, well, see above. The bottom line is that he had no business pitching against this lineup.

Ultimately, this was a series that the Mariners should have won and simply didn't. It was ugly. We frankly don't want to talk about it anymore.

All the Mariners can do now is try to redeem themselves over the weekend. The Minnesota Twins are in town for three games, starting on Friday at 7:10 p.m. PT.