The Mariners drop the series in sunny San Francisco, Giants win 4-1
New pitching friend Bryce Miller didn’t stay sharp enough for the dull Mariners offense to overcome old pitching friend Robbie Ray.
I do not have a therapy bunny. I do not have a therapy dog, cat, or ferret. If I did, I am sure I would think them very great, even if I likely wouldn’t include that in the name. One San Francisco Giants fan attending today’s game against the visiting Seattle Mariners did, in fact, attend with a therapy bunny. That bunny’s name is Alex the Great, and in fairness to the moniker, that is a substantially impressive rabbit.
But I didn’t have my own Alex, great or otherwise, for today’s game. Ironically, I do sometimes have something akin to a therapy baseball team, only that team is the Seattle Mariners and they were very not good today. It is true they could have been much, much worse, but that was perhaps one of the biggest offenses of today’s game, in that it didn’t even dare to be that interestingly terrible. Just your standard Mariner’s April 4-1 loss, this time to the Giants at Oracle Park.
If I had a “the Great” of a pitcher to rely on for good feelings in games like this, I would be ripe with options in the Mariners rotation, but the two pitchers tied for my number one answer are Logan Gilbert, and today’s starter Bryce Miller. Today, a fluffy bunny might have served better. There wasn’t anything particularly egregious about Miller’s line on the night, throwing 93 pitches over 5.1 innings and giving up three earned runs on seven hits, walking three and striking out four, but neither was it pretty to watch. There were times Big Tex would flash into his usual form, he had the most swings and misses in the game with ten whiffs, and five on his knuckle curve. But those three walks? All of them on four pitches, one to Willy Adames and two to Mike Yastrzemski.
Miller may not have been at his most lethal, but the Giants didn’t draw blood off of him until the fourth. The perpetual thorns in the M’s side, both Mariner and Miller, was primarily a triple threat. Jung Hoo Lee, Mike Yastrzemski, and perpetually in an even more true sense, Matt Chapman. In that fourth inning the trouble started when Jung Hoo Lee found a low-in-the-zone splitter and squeaked it into right field and wheeled out a double. And then wheeled out a steal. Next up Matt Chapman hit it much harder, 107.3mph into left field, getting himself an RBI double. Later in that inning, it was Mike Yastrzemski that would hit in Matt Chapman. Bryce wouldn’t only give up the two in the fourth, but would be responsible for the Giants’ other two in the sixth.
Before that could happen though, we did get a nice classic Miller inning for the bottom of the fifth, starting with the Tyler Fitzgerald strikeout on three pitches, and going on to face the minimum. Then the sixth started, and it started with a Jung Hoo Lee double, this time taking a hanging knuckle curve and blasting it to deep center, bouncing into a ground-rule double. If it had stayed in, it surely would have been a triple with the way Lee was moving. Forgive me for the redundancy, but what came next is what happened before: a Matt Chapman double scoring Lee, an 105.5 mph line drive to right field. A Mike Yastrzemski four pitch walk would be Miller’s final act in the game, and Trent Thornton finished out the inning, but not before allowing Chapman to score on a Wilmer Flores single, the final run charged to Miller or any Seattle pitcher in the game.
The Mariners threatened on offense multiple occasions, only they ultimately were the greater threat to themself. Only five strikeouts on the day is refreshing, especially paired with six walks, and the seven hits… could be worse, but even when Seattle got on the basepaths they managed to do literally nothing with it. On the night they were 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position. Victor Robles and J.P. Crawford both managed a steal each, but so too were Dylan Moore and Ryan Bliss caught stealing, both of them not even close. It was a frustrating lack of opportunities, or taking advantage of them. The lone run from the Mariners came in the top of the fifth when Dylan Moore punished a Robbie Ray 92.9 mph fastball up in the zone, sending it 105.1 mph dead center for a solo shot.
An even more warm and fuzzy story than the Giant bunny, perhaps, was the return to the big leagues of Jesse Hahn, making his first MLB debut since 2021. Hahn went two scoreless, giving up two hits and a walk, and striking out Lamonte Wade Jr. on a full count.
If you have been expecting more of the M’s season, or of today’s game. If you were expecting them to perhaps be able to get to the enemy they know in Robbie Ray, as the ROOT Broadcast more than once suggested might be in the cards, then you set yourself up for disappointment. But, neither is it world ending. Miller lasted long enough combined with the innings from Jesse Hahn to let the bullpen recover after Friday’s heavy use. The Mariners round out the series with game three behind Bryan Woo, and they already lost the series, but they can still avoid the sweep. After the last couple of losses, maybe they owe us some baseball therapy and give us an easy Sunday win. If not, we will always have fluffy bunnies.