Mariners Offense Goes Missing Behind Bryan Woo In Loss To Padres
This one felt familiar in all the wrong ways. The Mariners got another strong outing from Bryan Woo on Tuesday night and still walked away with a 4-1 loss because the offense just never gave him much of a chance. That is a rough way to open a series, especially against a Padres team built exactly the way this game played out. Once San Diego got to its bullpen with a lead, the whole thing started to feel cooked.
Woo's final line still does not fully capture how well he limited the Padres offense. He went 7 IP, 8 H, 3 ER, 1 BB, 3 K. It definitely was not his flashiest start of the year, but it was another outing where he competed, limited damage, and kept the Mariners in the game long enough for the lineup to do something.
Michael King Silences Mariners As Seattle Drops Flat Opener To Padres
Michael King looked every bit like the problem we knew he could be. When he's right, he can still run it up with the best of them. He gave the Padres 6 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 2 BB, 5 K. More importantly, he kept Seattle from stacking anything meaningful together after the second inning.
That top of the second, Seattle loaded the bases and got a sacrifice fly from Dominic Canzone . At the moment, it felt like maybe the Mariners were about to make King work early and possibly create the kind of pressure this offense needs to generate against top-end pitching. Instead, that sac fly stood as the Mariners' only run of the night.
The bigger issue here is that this game followed the exact script Seattle needed to avoid. We all knew the worst-case scenario was letting the Padres hand a lead over to that bullpen. Once that happened, the mountain got steep in a hurry.
Adrian Morejon, Jason Adam , and Mason Miller took it from there and completely slammed the door shut from the seventh through the ninth without giving up a hit. By the time Miller came trotting in with a 4-1 lead in the ninth, this thing felt pretty much over. Hopefully the Mariners had the bus warming up.
Woo pitched well enough to deserve better. When your starter gives you seven innings and keeps the game under control, the lineup has to meet him halfway. Seattle failed to do that.
Games like this put almost no margin for error on the pitching staff. Against a bullpen like that, it's a dangerous way to live.
This article was originally published on www.si.com/mlb/mariners/onsi as Mariners Offense Goes Missing Behind Bryan Woo In Loss To Padres .
