SEATTLE_Baseball can be a cruel game, and it can be cruel because it does not care about the past, and it can be cruel because it always seems to have a way of evening out in the end.
That was the lesson from the Seattle Mariners' 2-1 loss Thursday to the Minnesota Twins, a defeat that snapped a five-game winning streak and dropped the Mariners back below .500. They still haven't been above .500 this season.
Robinson Cano, a man who had made only one error in 49 games this season, suddenly made two on one play. And Mike Zunino, who has worked so hard to hit the ball hard up the middle and who won the game the night before by doing just that, did exactly what he wanted to do_and still hit into a double play.
As Mariners' players are fond of saying, that's baseball.
With two outs and runners on first and second in the fifth inning, Twins first baseman Joe Mauer hit a slow grounder to Cano at second. It was the type of grounder Cano fields and flips to first to end the inning without thinking, and yet on Thursday, he bobbled the ball for an error.
He then picked it up and fired a throw to third, hoping to get the runner leaning off the base. Instead, the throw skipped away from Kyle Seager.
A run scored. The Twins led 2-0.
The Mariners scored in the bottom of the fifth inning, trying to mount a comeback for the second night in a row. Zunino, the hero the night before with a walkoff home run, stepped to the plate in the eighth inning with runners on first and second.
Since he was recalled from the minor leagues following his demotion, Zunino's production has soared. He said he's aiming to hit the ball at the ROOT Sports sign in right-center field, pretty much right back up the middle. Before, when he struggled, he often tried to pull everything.
So Zunino stepped to the plate in the eighth inning, and he kept the same approach that has worked for him lately, and he drilled a line drive right where he wanted, right back up the middle.
Except the ball stuck in the glove of Twins pitcher Taylor Rogers, who threw to second for an inning-ending double play.
The Mariners scored their run after Jarrod Dyson led off the bottom of the fifth with a triple. Ben Gamel scored Dyson with a sacrifice fly to cut the Twins lead to 2-1.
Christian Bergman did exactly what Mariners manager Scott Servais said he expected of his fill-in starters: He went five innings and kept the Mariners in the game.
Bergman allowed a fourth-inning solo home run that gave the Twins a 1-0 lead, which should have been the only run he allowed. Instead, Cano's two errors with two outs not only allowed a run to score but also likely cost Bergman a sixth inning of work because of his pitch count.
That was enough of a mistake to prove the difference.
