BOSTON _ The Mariners' longest losing streak of the 2018 season ended at five games Saturday night.
They won't get swept at Fenway Park. They won't lose every game on the road trip. The season is not over.
A decisive 7-2 victory over the Red Sox stopped the losing and quelled the outside panic ... for now.
A night after Seattle pitchers gave up 14 runs on 20 hits, starter Mike Leake provided some calm to the storm of missed locations and hard-hit pitches.
The veteran right-hander delivered one of his best outings of the season, tossing eight shutout innings and allowing just three hits with two walks and five strikeouts. He had 12 ground-ball outs and of the balls put into play, only three registered exit velocities of more than 100 mph, which is considered a "barreled" ball.
Why didn't he get to try for the shutout?
Well, closer Edwin Diaz hadn't thrown since June 16, which also was the last day the Mariners had won a game.
Predictably, Diaz wasn't as sharp as usual. He gave up a leadoff single to J.D. Martinez and a triple to Mitch Moreland for Boston's first run of the game. Diaz came back to strike out the next two batters before giving up a run-scoring single to Eduardo Nunez. But he retired the next batter to end the game and get his work in.
Leake got some personal redemption in the outing. In his previous start, also against the Red Sox, but at Safeco Field, he gave up five runs in the third inning of what ended up being a 9-3 defeat.
Conversely, Boston starter Eduardo Rodriguez was making his second consecutive start against the Mariners, and his didn't go as well as the one last one, which was just two runs allowed on six hits over six innings. This time, the Mariners knocked Rodriguez out of the game after just four innings, scoring five runs on seven hits and two walks.
The outing wasn't all easy for Leake. After retiring the first two hitters in the first inning, he allowed a single to Martinez, a double to Moreland and walked Brock Holt to load the bases.
The Red Sox initially appeared to pick up a run when Rafael Devers swung and missed at a pitch in the dirt that got past catcher Chris Herrmann and rolled to the backstop. But both Leake and Herrmann immediately rushed to home-plate umpire Alfonso Marquez, pleading that the pitch hit Devers in the foot on the swing.
Servais came out and asked for a replay review. The replays showed it clearly hit Devers in the foot. By rule, it's a dead ball. So Martinez had to go back to third. A pitcher later, Devers grounded out to second to end the inning.
From there, Leake found a rhythm. He got ahead early and kept hitters off balance with an assortment of off-speed pitches. There were no patterns or predictability to his methods, just execution.
The Mariners grabbed a 1-0 lead in the first. Dee Gordon led off the game with an infield single and Mitch Haniger immediately drove him home with a double into the gap in left-center.
The Mariners just kept adding. Nelson Cruz, who had three hits on the night, doubled with one out in the second and later scored on an error by shortstop Tzu-Wei Lin. The Mariners hung three on Rodriguez in the fourth. Haniger smacked a two-run double off the green monster and later came around to score on Kyle Seager's hustling infield single.
Seattle tacked on runs in the sixth and seventh against the Red Sox bullpen.
