Mariners do the right things the wrong way, lose to Twins 3-1

Offense dulls Castillo’s gem with another punchless performance

Conventional baseball wisdom would have you believe that making a pitcher work usually results in positive outcomes for the offense. Today the Mariners, defiers of convention, worked nine full counts, and they scored exactly one (1) run. That’s because all those full counts often ended up in outs or strikeouts—four strikeouts, to be exact, en route to an eye-wateringly-bad fourteen on the day. That’s just not a recipe for success no matter how many deep counts you work, and especially not with a bullpen like Minnesota’s.

The Mariners had no answers for Simeon Woods Richardson, who didn’t have the world’s sharpest command but managed to punch out eight Mariners nonetheless. This was the location of those four full count strikeouts—a couple nice paintings on the edges, especially with HP umpire Chris Segal’s generously-sized strikezone, but also a couple where he just bamboozled Mariners hitters, including freezing Josh Rojas on that fastball in the middle of the plate and getting Mitch Garver swinging through the slider.

The one thing that those lengthy plate appearances did was bounce Woods Richardson by the seventh inning, which is when the Mariners had their best chance to score. Finally, those full counts paid off, as Griffin Jax opened the inning by going full counts to the first three hitters, resulting in two singles and a walk. With the bases loaded and no outs, Ty France saw this sequence of pitches:

Ty had not one but two opportunities to do something productive there and came up empty one one and fouled the other one away. Mitch Garver did manage to make sure it wasn’t a complete NOBLETIGER with a sac fly, getting a sweeper on the plate he could handle, but Luke Raley struck out on four pitches to end the inning, and any hope of the Mariners being able to do anything in this game.

You can’t really pin a loss on one player, especially when the offense is as inept as they were today, but Ty France gets whatever the opposite of the Sun Hat Award is: not only did he go 0 for 3 with two strikeouts, including that very important one, but he also committed an error that allowed the Twins’ first run to score and cost Luis Castillo some pitches. Perhaps, since the Sun Hat Award is named after Zach Mason’s favorite emojis, we will call it the Clown Shoes Award in honor of one of my favorite tweets/emoji reacts when someone does something silly.

Castillo was cruising up until the fifth inning, when France’s misplay allowed Max Kepler to get to second after chopping after a changeup on the first pitch of the fifth. Immediately afterward, Castillo threw a first pitch ball to Carlos Correa—notable because it was the first time all game he hadn’t thrown a first-pitch strike to a batter. Up until France’s error, Castillo had been working on a perfect game; he finished the fourth inning at 49 pitches, 37 of them thrown for strikes and a perfect 12/12 on first-pitch strikes. After the error, Castillo wobbled some, giving up a double to Correa—on a pretty well-located fastball off the plate, it must be said—and then walking Carlos Santana on four pitches, although again, that requires an asterisk because Segal ruled several borderline pitches balls. However, Castillo bounced back masterfully, absolutely undressing Christian Vazquez on three pitches for a swinging strikeout and then getting Manuel Margot to ground out on two pitches. Postgame, Castillo said the error didn’t throw him off, and it’s easy to believe that from the ever-consistent La Piedra, but it did put the Mariners in the position of having to play catch-up.

Unfortunately, the Twins would get out ahead again in the seventh. Castillo walked Max Kepler to lead off the innin, and then Correa got him again for a double, punching a slider into left field. Vazquez then managed to make contact against Castillo for a sac fly to make it 2-1. That would be all the Twins needed given the Mariners’ offensive ineptitude all game, but they scored one more just to make sure when Trent Thornton, replacing Castillo, gave up a single to nine-hole hitter Manuel Margot after falling behind him 3-0. But again, the pitching staff gave up a measly three runs, and the offense gave them virtually no support. That’s just not going to work, no matter how many full counts a team gets into.

This was a frustrating loss, but in the battle-vs-war/sprint-vs-marathon tallies, one has to be encouraged by Castillo’s performance. He tallied seven strikeouts and absolutely had the Twins on their heels for the first six innings; most excitingly, not only did he have success with his fastball-sinker and slider, but he was also able to get swings and whiffs on his changeup, which had some excellent vertical action and bite today. He threw 20 changeups and got 11 swings and five whiffs. In his last outing against the Braves, Castillo threw nine changeups, but got a lot of swings (5) and misses (3) on the pitch; tonight he was able to bring that same efficiency but on a greater number of changeups thrown. Compare that to his outing against the Rangers, where he threw eight changeups but only baited the Rangers into one swing on the pitch, with no whiffs. Having the changeup back on the menu could be a significant difference-maker for The Rock, and even in a bummer game like this, is a positive takeaway.