SEATTLE _ The Seattle Mariners avoided making Major League Baseball history Wednesday night at T-Mobile Park. And that was a good thing.
From Zack Greinke's first pitch of the game until Austin Nola's one-out single in the ninth, the Mariners were on the verge of becoming the first team to be no-hit three times in one season.
That dubious achievement would have put them in the MLB record book.
While they avoided history, they still couldn't find victory. The 3-0 loss to the Houston Astros meant that the Mariners made some club history, and not it a good way. They closed out the season series with Houston by losing 13 straight games and finishing 1-18 vs. the AL West leaders. It's the first time in Mariners team history that they have finished 1-18 vs. a division foe in a season. The previous worst record was a 2-17 finish vs. the Oakland A's in 2006.
Greinke was mesmerizing, showing impeccable command. If the strike zone were the size of a Cheerio, he would have found some way to fit the baseball through it. Using a variety of pitches and differing speeds, no two looking the same, Greinke had the Mariners utterly confused and off balance at the plate.
He was perfect through the first 5 1/3 innings, retiring 16 straight batters, including five in row by strikeout before Dee Gordon stepped to the plate. Not known for his patience at the plate, Gordon worked a rare walk to break up the perfect game. An irritated Greinke ended the inning quickly, catching a soft liner off the bat of Omar Narvaez and flipping to first for a double play.
In the search of positives for the Mariners, Yusei Kikuchi gave them a solid outing.
Kikuchi's final start of the season was a little like his season as a whole _ a little shaky at times, pitch-filled with hints of potential. In fact, it was probably one of his better outings considering it was his 32nd start of the season and the lineup he was facing.
Kikuchi pitched six innings, allowing two runs on six hits with no walks, a hit batter and four strikeouts.
Both runs came in the first inning. After George Springer singled to start the game, Alex Bregman, who tormented Seattle all season, laced a one-out double into the left-field corner to score Springer. It would be the first of Bregman's three hits off Kikuchi on the night.
Yordan Alvarez, the Astros' latest hard-hitting and hulking phenom, somehow took a slider 4 inches off the plate and muscled it 342 feet to left field. The opposite-field shot just missed being a homer and instead went for an RBI double. But Kikuchi regrouped and retired the next two batters.
He wouldn't allow another run for the next five innings. He exited having thrown 103 pitches. The total was driven up by a 14-pitch battle with Bregman in the fifth inning that resulted in a double.
Kikuchi finished the season with a 6-11 record, which isn't exactly what fans envisioned when he signed a four-year, $58 million contract this offseason.
The Mariners knew the transition to Major League Baseball wouldn't be simple.
"Overall, he's learned a lot," Mariners manager Scott Servais said. "The whole goal when this whole thing started from his opening press conference was that this is going to be a transition year, keep him healthy, keep him through the year, we were going to reduce some of the workload with some abbreviated starts, we stayed true to what we said we were going to do."
And the results?
"From day one, we didn't really know much about his routine and how he went through things, he didn't know much about our game," Servais said. "It's really come together pretty well. I think numbers are on the paper, statistically, he would've liked to have a better season. There were certain games that got away from him. Games where he felt really good about it and then a few hits and a couple of homers and, wham, he's out of the game."
