Kirby expresses frustrations after allowing career high in runs

DETROIT -- George Kirby craned his neck backwards and to his right as his eyes rolled backwards, a gesture of frustration and defeat after watching the last of his 12 hits surrendered on Tuesday night sail into the right-field bleachers for a punctuating grand slam.

Kirby has had the occasional clunker over his three seasons in the Majors, but none like this -- one that saw him surrender a career-high 11 runs, including three homers in the Mariners' 15-1 loss to the Tigers at Comerica Park -- their largest margin of defeat this season. But only six were earned due to an error from shortstop Leo Rivas, a ruling that wasn’t changed until postgame.

Kirby exited with two outs in the fourth inning, after a grand slam from Jake Rogers, to tie his shortest start of the season.

“I’m not going to take my foot off the gas,” Kirby said postgame, more than 90 minutes after he departed. “It’s one out of 33 games that I'll pitch this year. And I'm [expletive] excited for Pittsburgh next week.”

A case could be made that a few of those hits against Kirby should’ve been errors, beyond Rivas’ wide throw in the fourth, which preceded the night’s second homer from Kerry Carpenter and Rogers’ slam.

It’s possible more rulings may change if the Mariners appeal. Regardless, Kirby wasn’t the only culprit for the damage, as multiple infield knocks against him found open space, prolonged innings, elevated his pitch count and forced him against heavy traffic.

“Some sloppy baseball,” said third baseman Josh Rojas, who was at the center of at least three of the plays in question.

Playing “clean baseball,” Mariners manager Scott Servais said pregame, was a huge reason why they outscored the Mets, 22-1, over a weekend sweep -- and not doing so on Tuesday was a leading cause for why they suffered their largest margin of defeat this season.

“I went up to Kirb right when he came out,” Rojas said, “and made sure to let him know, like, 'Hey, that was some sloppy defense behind you. It can't happen. And go out there and keep pitching your butt off.'”

On the other end, Tarik Skubal again showed why he’s the frontrunner for the American League Cy Young Award, suppressing Seattle for the second time in seven days.

The Mariners mustered just three hits vs. the overpowering lefty, including a 108.7 mph double from Julio Rodríguez in his second game back from the injured list. Rodríguez’s playing time for the foreseeable future will come out of the designated hitter spot while he continues to rehab his high right ankle sprain.

Mitch Haniger drove in Justin Turner on an RBI single up the middle in the fourth as Seattle’s lone run. Other than that, Skubal kept the Mariners quiet, with nine strikeouts for the second straight outing.

Seattle was also without Jorge Polanco and Cal Raleigh as each nursed minor injuries.

Kirby saw his ERA rise from 3.13 to 3.42, while Skubal lowered his to an MLB-best 2.53. For an extended stretch this summer, it looked like Seattle’s righty might thrust his way into the Cy race with Skubal, after twirling nine straight quality starts. But Kirby has yet to throw another in his three outings since and, barring an incredible stretch to the end, he’s likely tumbled out of the race.

“Just trying not to worry about it,” Kirby said of pitching through the prolonged innings. “And it's just one of these games, whatever I threw, these guys were on it. It doesn't help that I didn't hit my spots. But [expletive]. They hit the ball well tonight. That's really all it came down to.”

Things didn’t get better after Kirby left, either -- as Trent Thornton gave up three more runs and Troy Taylor, fresh off being called up on Saturday, served up a solo homer to Javier Báez. Overall, the Mariners gave up 20 hits.

Now comes the task of flushing it and responding against a Tigers team that -- outside Haniger’s miraculous walk-off last Thursday -- has been in complete command in these matchups.

“We're all professionals,” Rojas said. “We've had games like this. I've had games that have gone much worse for me. You've got to show up tomorrow, forget about what happened and go out there and win a ballgame.”