SEATTLE _ This 2{-week run of baseball _ the best the Seattle Mariners have played in this shortened 2020 season _ continued Saturday night at T-Mobile Park with their fourth consecutive win _ a solid 5-3 victory over the reeling Texas Rangers.
Does it help that they are playing an awful Texas team that is worse than them and limping toward the end of the season? Sure. The Rangers are bad enough that general manager Jon Daniels said the team may reduce payroll going into next season, trading away players like Lance Lynn and Joey Gallo, who they shopped at the trade deadline.
But there should be some level of gratification in that the Rangers were actually trying to put together a viable team for the 2020 season and the opening of their stadium while the Mariners were using 2020 as a developmental season.
Whatever the perspective, the Mariners are playing competent baseball and beating teams in their division, specifically the Rangers and the Angels.
With the Saturday's win, the Mariners have won 10 of their last 14 games. Meanwhile, the Rangers are have lost 17 of their last 20 games.
The Mariners broke a 2-2 tie in the eighth inning, scoring three runs against the Rangers bullpen, highlighted by RBI singles from Jose Marmolejos, Evan White and Phillip Ervin, who was playing in his first game as a Mariner.
Rookie right-hander Yohan Ramirez picked up his second save of the season, despite giving up a solo homer to Shin-Soo Choo.
Bu the key to the victory and this run of good baseball was the work of starting pitcher Justus Sheffield, who pitched a career-high seven innings, allowing two runs on eight hits with a walk and six strikeouts.
The Mariners gave Sheffield an early lead, scoring a pair of runs off Rangers' starter Kyle Gibson _ all with two outs _ in the third inning
With runners on first and second, Kyle Lewis smacked a line-drive to center to score J.P. Crawford for a 1-0. Kyle Seager was hit by a pitch to load the bases for Ty France, who worked a seven-pitch walk to force a run and make it 2-0.
The Rangers got a run back in the top of the fourth. Nick Solak led off with a single, advanced to second on Soo-Choo's one-out bunt single against the shift, stole third and scored on Scott Heineman's ground out to shortstop.
Sheffield was one out away from exiting with a 2-1 lead and be in line for the win. With two out in the seventh, he threw a 1-0 sinker into the bat path of Anderson Tejada, the Rangers' No. 9 hitter. As the line drive solo homer cleared the fence, Sheffield screamed in anger, using a common word of frustration. It was Tejada's second homer of the season and it tied the game. Obviously irritated with the mistake pitch, Sheffield rechanneled his anger into leadoff hitter Leody Taveras, who he made look silly on nasty slider in the dirt for a swinging strike three.
As he left the mound, having thrown more innings in a MLB game than he has in his career, Sheffield was still bitter about the pitch to Tejada, slamming his left hand on his glove multiple times and muttering that oft-used word.
Even though Sheffield had thrown just 87 pitches after seven innings, manager Scott Servais went to rookie right-hander Joey Gerber, who gave the Mariners a scoreless eighth inning of work in relief of Sheffield.
