SEATTLE_It was a frustrating reminder of seasons past_few baserunners, no clutch hits, bad strikeouts and a wasted pitching performance.
In their return to Safeco Field, the Seattle Mariners offense has gone from productive to poor and it cost them on Saturday night in a 2-1 loss to the Houston Astros.
Seattle wasted a solid pitching performance from James Paxton and squandered at opportunity to move up in the wild-card standings with another inept offensive showing.
They dropped to a 78-70 on the season, but didn't lose any ground in the American League wild-card race with the Orioles losing. It was essentially the third straight game that the offense had sputtered. They managed just two runs in their final win of the road trip in Anaheim and were shut out on Friday night. Saturday night didn't see much more in the way of production.
Mike Fiers isn't a dominant starter. But much like his teammate Collin McHugh, who shut down the Mariners on Friday night, isn't going to overwhelm hitters with stuff or velocity.
But he looked dominant against Seattle following McHugh's scouting report and dropping curveball after curveball at Mariners hitters. It's not that Seattle swung and missed at the pitches, but they weren't hitting them hard and certainly not driving them out of the park.
Fiers pitched six scoreless innings, allowing just three hits with a walk and four strikeouts to improve to 11-7 on the season.
Starter James Paxton gave Seattle just about all it could ask for in an outing. The lefty flirted with a perfect game and gave up two runs on four hits in seven innings pitched. His only walk was intentional and he struck out seven.
Paxton was perfect through five innings, using his high 90s fastball and biting curveball to mow down hitters.
But his bid for a perfect game was broken up five pitches into the sixth inning when Teoscar Hernandez singled up the middle on a 2-2 fastball for the Astros' first baserunner of the night. Paxton's second baserunner allowed came moments later when Tyler White doubled on 2-0 fastball into the left-field corner, putting runners on second and third with no outs.
It appeared Paxton might escape the self-made jam. He got Jake Marisnick to bounce out to third without scoring a run and struck out George Springer.
But he couldn't get that third out without any damage.
Yulieski Gurriel, who has been playing Major League Baseball for about a month, looked like a veteran, getting on top of a chest high 98-mph fastball from Paxton and driving it through the left side to score both runners.
The Mariners snapped a streak of 18 scoreless innings in the eighth inning. Norichika Aoki reached base for the fourth time in the game with an infield single off Astros reliever Luke Gregerson. Aoki scored from first on Seth Smith's RBI double to the right-center gap. But Smith was stranded on second. Robinson Cano struck out in an ugly at-bat and Nelson Cruz popped out to short to end the threat.
