The Eye-Opener: Mariners just good enough to break your heart
Jul 24, 2017, 6:30 AM | Updated: 7:40 am
Taylott Motter was picked off in the bottom of the ninth of the Mariners' loss on Sunday. (AP)
(AP)
I dozed off on Sunday afternoon.
I didn’t mean to. It just happened. The couch was so comfortable and the air-conditioning hadn’t kicked on and I slid out of consciousness at some point in the midst of the Mariners’ run of 13 consecutive outs after scoring four runs in the bottom of the fourth.
My wife had to wake me up as Seattle brought the tying run to the plate in the bottom of the ninth. If only someone had similarly made sure that Taylor Motter was paying attention after he entered the game as a pinch-runner for Nelson Cruz.
That’s not to pile on. Motter doesn’t need some jackal to point out the enormity of the mistake in getting picked off by left-hander Aroldis Chapman on a pitch where he wasn’t even stealing.
The fact that Kyle Seager subsequently doubled only salted what wasn’t a wound so much as a gaping sore of a series. Seattle lost 6-4 on Sunday, the Mariners’ third defeat in four games of what was the team’s most important series so far this season.
The Mariners are resilient. They’ve shown that in fighting their way back to relevance several different times this season. They’re just not good enough to get over the hump. At least not yet.
They’re the NBA team that falls behind by 20 points in the first half and makes a third-quarter run to get within a bucket or two of the lead. The problem is that just about everyone makes that third-quarter run in the NBA. It’s getting over the hump that is the important part.
Seattle had the chance to do that. Again. Had they won three of four games against the Yankees, Seattle would be in the lead for the final wild-card berth in the playoffs. Instead, the Mariners couldn’t even muster a split, which means Boston comes to town with the clock ticking toward an August in which Seattle will play 20 of its 27 games on the road.
