HOUSTON _ Losing on Opening Day is never ideal. Getting shut out in that loss not optimal. But having your opening day starting pitcher leave the game with an injury?
How's your 2017 season so far Mariners?
Seattle's 3-0 loss to the Astros on Monday at Minute Maid Park was a bit of a letdown for a season filled with optimism and expectations. Mustering three hits and failing to score a run with a lineup that potent was frustrating and unexpected, but won't be commonplace for the season.
But the biggest concern is Felix Hernandez exiting the game after just five innings because of tightness in his groin. The injury isn't deemed to be serious. But it was still concerning enough to remove Hernandez from the game after just 65 pitches.
With Drew Smyly already on the disabled list with a strained flexor muscle in his forearm and not scheduled to return for 6-8 weeks, the Mariners can ill afford to be down another starting pitcher, particularly Hernandez, who they hoped would have a bounce-back season after a 2016 where he missed six weeks on the disabled list.
The injury occurred with one out in the fourth inning on Josh Reddick's crisp ground ball to the right side of the infield.
For some reason, Hernandez was slow to react and leave the mound to cover first base. So when Danny Valencia fielded it with ease and was ready to flip it to Hernandez at first, he saw his pitcher in a mad dash trying to catch up.
Valencia made a nice toss to lead Hernandez, who caught the ball and beat Reddick to the bag by a step.
In a scene that has become all-too-familiar when Hernandez makes those plays at first, he came up limping. Initially, the thought was that he had turned his right ankle. His ankles have shown the durability of dry spaghetti for most of his career.
But it wasn't the ankle. It was the groin. Hernandez met with manager Scott Servais and trainer Rick Griffin on the mound, threw a couple of warm-up tosses and declared himself good to go. He closed out the inning by getting Yuli Gurriel to ground out to third.
Hernandez returned in the fifth inning and worked a 1-2-3 frame, which was aided by Jarrod Dyson's outstanding catch in the left-field corner on a line drive off the bat of former Mariner Nori Aoki.
But in between innings, the pain in the groin continued to bother Hernandez. He met with trainers, Servais and pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre. When they decided to pull him, he was visibly irritated by the decision. Despite Hernandez's protests, it was the proper decision given the situation.
Hernandez's line: five innings, two runs on five hits with no walks and six strikeouts.
The two runs came via a pair of solo homers, including one on the first hitter Hernandez faced.
George Springer, the Astros ultra aggressive leadoff man, who swings hard and often and strikes out at a rate commensurate with that approach, became the third Astros player in club history to lead off the season with a homer.
Hernandez left a 2-1 fastball up in the zone on the inner half of the plate. Springer clubbed the mistake into the Crawford Boxes in left field for a 1-0 lead.
The Astros pushed the lead to 2-0 when Carlos Correa led off the inning with a majestic, towering homer to left field that stayed just inside the foul pole, but traveled out of the confines of Minute Maid. MLB Statcast measured the blast at 449 feet.
Perhaps more impressive was Correa being able to keep the pitch fair. The 1-1 fastball was inside and off the plate and was not a strike.
Like Hernandez, Astros Opening Day starter Dallas Keuchel was coming off a dismal 2016 where he spent time on the disabled list. Keuchel looked more like his 2015 version, where he won the Cy Young, tossing seven shutout innings and giving up two hits with two walks and four strikeouts to get the win.
The Mariners' two hits off Keuchel came on a single from Jean Segura to start the game and a single from Robinson Cano in the fourth inning. The Mariners had their best chance to get to Keuchel in the fourth, loading the bases with two outs. But after seeing two teammates draw walks in the inning, Leonys Martin showed minimal patience, swinging at the first pitch and grounding out to second to end the threat.
