The Mariners had a lead going into the ninth inning last night. Emerson Hancock had just struck out fourteen Kansas City Royals over seven innings. The bullpen had three outs to get. This is the part where we tell you the final score was 3-2 in ten innings, Kansas City wins, and you process that information at your own pace.
THE GAME
Emerson Hancock was extraordinary. Seven innings, six hits, one earned run, fourteen strikeouts, 103 pitches. Fourteen! The Royals went to the plate thirty times against him and roughly half of those trips ended with them walking back to the dugout having made no contact whatsoever. Seth Lugo was good too — six innings, seven hits, two earned runs, six strikeouts — but Hancock was on a different level and the Mariners still lost, which is the kind of thing that makes you want to lie down on the floor for a while.
Seattle scored first. Leo Rivas came around to score in the first inning to make it 1-0, and for seven innings that felt like it might be enough given what Hancock was doing. Kansas City tied it in the third on a run off Hancock — the only run he would allow — and the game settled into a tense, low-scoring affair that both starting pitchers were winning and neither offense was.
Josh Naylor drove in Seattle's second run in the fifth to make it 2-1. Julio Rodríguez went 2-for-4 with a double and scored once. That was the Mariners' offense. Seven hits, two runs, 2-for-7 with runners in scoring position. Kansas City went 2-for-11 with runners in scoring position, which on paper sounds worse — and yet here we are. The Royals left nine runners on base and still won. The Mariners stranded five and lost. Baseball does not grade on effort.
Then the ninth inning happened. Andrés Muñoz came out to close it. He allowed two hits and one run. Kansas City tied it at two. The lead that Hancock had spent 103 pitches building was gone in roughly twelve minutes.
The game went to ten innings. Cooper Criswell came out for Seattle in the tenth, and Maikel Garcia hit a go-ahead double that scored two. Criswell took the loss. The Mariners went quietly in the bottom of the tenth against Lucas Erceg, who saved the game for Kansas City for the second time in three nights. Final: 3-2. Win: Matt Strahm. Loss: Criswell. Save: Erceg.
EMERSON HANCOCK (He earned it)
There are nights in baseball where a pitcher does everything right and it doesn't matter, and those nights are the ones that stick with you. Emerson Hancock struck out fourteen batters last night. He threw 103 pitches. He gave up one run. He left with a lead. He got a no-decision.
Hancock is 26 years old and last night he looked like the best pitcher on the field in a game that also featured Seth Lugo, who is a legitimate major league starter. Fourteen strikeouts in seven innings is not a good start. It is a statement. It is the kind of outing where you check the box score the next morning expecting to see a W next to his name and instead you see nothing, because the bullpen had its own ideas about how the evening should go.
He will not get the win back. He will take the ball again in five days and do it again, because that appears to be who he is. That's worth something. It doesn't feel like it tonight, but it's worth something.
AROUND THE DIVISION: AL West Standings
Athletics: 18-16, first place Rangers: 16-17, two games back Mariners: 16-19, two and a half games back Astros: 14-21, four and a half out Angels: 13-22, five and a half out
The Mariners have now lost two straight to the Kansas City Royals, a team that entered this series 13-19. Seattle is 16-19 and has dropped to third place in the AL West, two and a half games behind Oakland. The Rangers are in second at two back. The Astros and Angels are doing their best to make everyone else feel better about themselves, and they are succeeding.
The good news is that this division is still genuinely winnable. The bad news is that the Mariners are currently making that harder than it needs to be by losing to a bullpen featuring a pitcher named Luinder Avila who threw two scoreless innings after the Royals' starter left and whom nobody on this newsletter had heard of before tonight. No offense to Luinder Avila.
FINAL THOUGHT
Emerson Hancock struck out fourteen batters last night and the Mariners lost. Write that down. Put it somewhere. Because when this team figures out how to hold a ninth-inning lead, that kind of start is going to win a lot of baseball games. The rotation is not the problem. Come back tomorrow. There's a rubber game to win.
-Bobby Bunt