Difficult stretch ahead for Mariners after loss

HOUSTON -- The Mariners have maintained a one-day-at-a-time approach for most of this season, and that attitude has pushed them to the edge of a postseason spot. Yet as the schedule winds down to October and the magnitude of each game grows, it’s impossible not to recognize that this weekend’s series against the first-place Astros carried far more weight than any against the division rival in at least three years.

And that’s what has made these past two days at Minute Maid Park all the more humbling.

What has statistically been the American League’s best lineup jumped all over Logan Gilbert during his 4 2/3 innings Saturday, tagging the rookie for nine runs -- four more than he’d given up in any game over 44 career starts since he was drafted in 2018, including the Minor Leagues.

Gilbert’s awakening to this bandbox of a ballpark coupled with another quiet night from the bats led to a 15-1 loss that has Seattle on the verge of being swept for the first time since May 21-23 in San Diego. The Mariners mustered just five hits, and the only production that kept them from being shut out was Mitch Haniger’s 28th homer, extending his career high.

“They blew our doors off the last couple days,” Mariners manager Scott Servais said. “There’s not a whole lot more you can say about it.”

Gilbert better mixed his secondary pitches compared to his last time out against the Blue Jays, who jumped all over his fastball. But the Astros still ambushed him, just as they did Yusei Kikuchi on Friday, and he wound up giving up two homers, one of which was merely tough luck. Yordan Alvarez lifted a changeup above the zone that barely cleared the Crawford Boxes, and according to Statcast, would’ve been a homer in just one MLB ballpark: This one.

The Mariners have now lost four in a row to the Astros after stunning them in what remains their biggest win of the season on July 26, when they came back after being down by seven. They are now 4-8 against the AL West heavyweights in 2021, who entered Saturday averaging 5.4 runs per game this season, batting .267 with a .339 on-base percentage and striking out at just a 19.6% rate -- all of those, the best marks in the Majors.

“I feel like they came in with a good approach. Especially as a team, it seemed like they were all on the same page with what they were trying to do,” Gilbert said. “From there, I was trying to get them off the fastball and make good pitches when I needed to. They just capitalized on mistakes, and it's a fine line between making good pitches in the zone and not leaving it over the plate. And when it does happen, they make you pay.”

Now, Seattle will look to avoid a sweep. Speaking of, let’s circle back to the Mariners' aforementioned May series against the Padres -- it still looms as one of their more defining moments this season, for how low they looked at the time and for how quickly they bounced back and surged their way into the playoff hunt in the three months since. They were 21-26 on that sun-soaked Sunday at Petco Park, when Servais called a postgame team meeting to motivate his troops. And they’ve gone 45-32 since, the Majors’ seventh-best record in that stretch.

The Mariners deserve a ton of credit for this mid-to-late summer run, but they’ll need another such bounceback if they’re going to remain in the hunt for an AL Wild Card. Saturday’s loss dropped them to four games behind Oakland for the second AL Wild Card spot.

And the road won’t get any easier. The Mariners still have Sunday’s series finale against the Astros, a club that has outscored them, 27-4, so far this weekend, then six more games against Houston in the next 18 days. In six games at Minute Maid Park this season, the Mariners are 1-5 and have been outscored, 41-12.

They also have a two-game set in Oakland beginning Monday and nine total against the A’s the rest of the way. Boston, which is the first team on the outside looking in for the final playoff spot, comes to Seattle for three games in September.

“The effort level, the preparation -- our guys are doing the same thing they've been doing all year long,” Servais said.

Overall, the Mariners have the AL’s third-toughest remaining schedule by opposing teams’ winning percentage, which is in part why FanGraphs gave Seattle just 2.4% odds at reaching the postseason entering Saturday.

There are 38 games remaining, meaning the Mariners are far from out of it. But an already uphill climb will be an even more challenging test over these final six weeks.