Mariners' season begins circling the drain after Max Scherzer caps Blue Jays sweep

For 99.99 percent of his career, losing a game to Max Scherzer has been a "no shame in that" sort of thing. The Seattle Mariners were lucky to catch him amidst the other 0.01 percent on Sunday, but they instead rolled over and let Scherzer one-hit them in a 7-0 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays.

Welcome to The Suck. We can debate when it started, but there now seems to be little doubt among Mariners fans that there is no escaping it. The team is moving in circular motion around a drain.

Scherzer entered Sunday's outing with 42 years in the age column and a 7.02 ERA and 1.540 WHIP on his stat line. He's an all-time great having a terrible year at the end of the line. You take that matchup any day of the week, and twice on Sundays in which Logan Gilbert is the opposing starter.

There is literally nothing positive to say about what actually happened. Gilbert didn't have it, and Mariners hitters somehow had even less. They let Scherzer overwhelm them with a 93 mph fastball and a whole bunch of junk. He drew 17 whiffs, four more than he had in any previous start this year.

The 8-1 blowout loss on Friday was bad, and made worse on Sunday when Emerson Hancock went on the injured list for an adductor strain stemming from the spill he took in the first inning. Worse still was the 4-3 loss on Saturday in which Kade Anderson and the bullpen lost their cool and gave away a 3-0 lead.

But Sunday? Sunday feels like whatever is below rock bottom. Like, where they keep all the turtles or whatever. It was a bad Blue Jays team completing a sweep of an even worse Mariners team, dropping the latter back to a season-worst nine games under .500 at 64-73. They need to win 17 of their last 25 games just to finish at .500.

Mariners are giving fans every reason to ask if they're any better than their remaining opponents

The bright side on the other side of this sweep is the same as it was before the series began. The Mariners have the softest remaining schedule of any team in MLB, which sure feels like an advantage while the AL West lead is still within reach.

The Boston Red Sox are up next, and even they have some strings attached these days. They are 42-17 since June 25, but 10-12 since August 8. Maybe, just maybe, Seattle is catching them at the right time. And after them, it's nothing but games against teams with losing records.

At this point, though, there's every reason to ask why the Mariners should be trusted to win even those games.

They are also a team with a losing record, after all, and one that is regressing rather than progressing. It's nice to see Cal Raleigh swinging a hot bat again, but the offense is clicking no more now than it has at any point all year. The pitching has a 5.49 ERA. The mental mistakes just keep piling up and piling up. Nobody looks like they give a crap about any of it.

The time for viewing the Mariners as some kind of cursed contender is over. This is a bad baseball team that plays an ugly brand of baseball. It's Dan Wilson's fault. It's also everyone else's. There will be hard decisions to make when it's all over.

For now, it ain't over 'til it's over. But it sure feels like it already is, doesn't it?

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