SEATTLE — Perhaps it would’ve been a fitting and necessary reminder of just how tenuous the balance between surprising success and abject failure remains for the current version of the Mariners.
Though they would like to forget, it wasn’t that long ago — May 5 and May 18 — that they were no-hit, at home, twice in the span of two weeks. They were bottoming out points of sinking stretches at the plate where simply getting hits let alone scoring runs felt like the impossible.
So being held hitless or having a perfect game thrown against them to round out what has been highly successful homestand would’ve been a cold slap of reality to the broad smiles they’ve been wearing during a stretched where they’d won eight of their last nine games, including their last five in a row.
They aren’t quite an offensive juggernaut just yet as evidenced by Wednesday afternoon’s 5-2 loss to the Rockies.
For nearly six innings, German Marquez kept the Mariners hitless and off the bases, and that old feeling of dread of being part of baseball infamy returned to T-Mobile Park, giving the 11,141 fans the apprehension that the Mariners might just be the first team in Major League Baseball’s modern era to be no-hit three times.
But with two outs in the sixth inning, Taylor Trammell provided some relief, belting a solo homer to break up Marquez’s bid for perfection that was gaining traction quickly.
The Mariners still lost to a Rockies team that has been abysmal on the road this season. Colorado improved to 6-28 in games away from Coors Field.
The Mariners will now have Thursday off in Chicago before opening up a three-game series vs. the White Sox, the leaders of the American League Central and a legitimate World Series contender.
Seattle’s five-game winning streak ends. But the Mariners (39-37) finish the nine-game homestand with a 7-2 record.
Facing a lineup with seven right-handed hitters, Sheffield couldn’t give the Mariners five complete innings. His final line: 4 1/3 innings pitched, three runs allowed on four hits with three walks and five strikeouts. He didn’t get rocked or give up a ton of runs or hits. He just didn’t throw as many quality strikes as needed and lacked efficiency to keep his pitch count under control.
Of his 87 pitches, he threw 50 strikes with 11 swings and misses, including seven on his slider.
But of the 20 batters he faced, Sheffield threw first-pitch strikes to just eight of them. He also had three-ball counts on 15 of those batters.
After a quick 1-2-3 first inning, Sheffield walked Charlie Blackmon to start the second inning. With one out, he fell behind in the count to Brendan Rodgers. Sheffield’s 3-1 fastball was over the center of the plate and Rodgers high fly ball just got over the wall in deep left-center and out of the reach of a leaping Taylor Trammell for a 2-0 lead.
Sheffield came back to strike out the next two batters and worked a 1-2-3 third inning. But his start got really sidetracked in the fourth inning.
He hung an 0-1 slider to Trevor Story that turned into a leadoff solo homer. Another walk to Blackmon and a double to deep center from C.J. Cron put Sheffield in more trouble. But a hard line drive down the third base line off the bat of Rodgers was caught by Kyle Seager and Chris Owings’ fly ball to right wasn’t deep enough for Blackmon to tag up.
Sheffield ended the inning with a strikeout of Joshua Fuentes that took a pitch-count sapping 14 pitches.
He started the fifth inning and got a quick first out on a pop up in foul territory. But it was the only out Sheffield recorded. He walked Raimel Tapia and allowed a single to Yonathan Daza to end his outing.
Will Vest delivered his best relief outing since coming off of COVID-19 quarantine. He struck out Story and got Blackmon to groundout to third to end the fifth and worked a 1-2-3 sixth.
Making his MLB debut, Vinny Nittoli allowed two runs in the eighth that pushed the Colorado lead to 5-1.
