BOSTON _ At least the Mariners won't have to come back to Boston for a makeup game in September.
But there were few other positives for the team on Sunday as a disastrous road trip concluded with an 11-2 loss and three-game sweep to the Red Sox.
It was a fourth straight loss for the Mariners as they finished the 10-game road trip with just two wins and fall to 20-23 on the season.
How bad was the series? The Red Sox outscored the Mariners, 34-8.
After watching the first two games of the series on his phone while attending his daughter's college graduation from Ole Miss, manager Scott Servais got to suffer through Sunday's game in person.
With rain failing from first pitch to the final out at varying levels from light drizzle to steady drops, the two teams slogged through 8 { innings in sloppy that might've led to a postponement or delayed start in the first days of the series. But on a getaway day finale, they pushed through the rain, safety and clean play be damned.
For three games at Fenway, the Red Sox hitters turned nearly every at-bat into a pitch-filled battle where surrender was not an option. It was the same thing the Mariners hitters did to opposing pitchers early in the season. Now Seattle's pitchers got to endure that struggle to get outs while keeping their pitch counts down.
Marco Gonzales, one of the Mariners' most efficient strike throwers, couldn't combat the Red Sox approach, which was aided by the rigidly tight strike zone of home plate umpire Quinn Wolcott, who wasn't calling strikes even an inch out of the zone.
Throw in the now-expected but still shameful Mariners defense to prolong innings and you arrive at a four-inning, 95-pitch start for Gonzales where he allowed four runs (two earned) on four hits with three walks and three strikes.
The Mariners gave Gonzales a 1-0 lead before he threw his first pitch. Mitch Haniger drew a leadoff walk, advanced to third on J.P. Crawford's double off the green monster and scored Edwin Encarnacion's sacrifice fly.
It was a sign of things to come when it took Gonzales eight pitches to strike out Andrew Benintendi and nine pitches to get Mookie Betts to ground out for his first two outs. He wouldn't get that third out until 23 pitches later.
J.D. Martinez smashed a solo homer to tie the score at 1. Gonzales walked Xander Bogaerts, gave up a soft single to Rafael Devers to put runners on the corners. He appeared to have the second out when Michael Chavis hit a pop behind first base. However, Shed Long overran the pop up and when he tried to stop and correct himself to catch, hit spikes couldn't grab in the saturated grass. Long slipped and fell, watching the ball land behind him for an RBI "single."
With Chavis batting, catcher Omar Narvaez made a careless attempt at a pitch inside, missing it easily for a run-scoring passed ball.
When Gonzales finally got Christian Vazquez to pop out to end the first inning, he'd thrown 40 pitches and the Mariners trailed 3-1.
The second inning was marginally better for Gonzales. He needed only 25 pitches to get through it. But with two outs, Jay Bruce got a late jump on a fly ball off the bat Betts and then dropped it for an error, allowing Benintendi to score from first to make it 4-1.
Gonzales worked through the next two innings scoreless despite another misplayed pop up in the third inning and a leadoff double in the fourth inning.
The Mariners trimmed the lead to 4-2 in the fifth inning on Narvaez's solo homer to right field. For a rare moment in the series, the Mariners were in a competitive game.
But the bullpen didn't allow it to stay that way.
Rookie Parker Markel, who got called up from Class AAA Tacoma on Sunday and was making his big league debut, gave up two runs in the fifth inning after getting two quick outs. Markel got hurt by Wolcott, who missed what appeared should've been a called strike three on Bogaerts, who later walked and started the rally that include three consecutive hits after the walk.
Boston scored three more runs off Dan Altavilla in the seventh inning and two more in the eighth off Mike Wright when Martinez smashed a two-run homer for his 11th career multihomer game.
