SEATTLE_Robinson Cano seemed confused. He couldn't have missed the pitch by that much. He should have at least gotten a piece of it to foul it off so he could see something different, something hittable. Cano looked back at catcher Gary Sanchez and home-plate umpire Jim Reynolds in disbelief. He'd struck out swinging with two outs and runners on the corners in the top of the sixth.
The inning was over. And the Seattle Mariners only legitimate chance to score off Masahiro Tanaka on Friday night ended as did the other seven innings of his outing _ with a zero.
With every game being critical to stay relevant in a wild-card race that is growing less competitive with each day, the Mariners couldn't muster a run in a 4-0 defeat against the New York Yankees.
The Mariners' current offensive woes and their willingness to swing at anything resembling a strike combined with Tanaka's stellar stuff and execution yielded a suboptimal result for Seattle.
While it's considered an inevitability to a good portion of the Mariners' fanbase _ and for good reasons _ the Mariners' fading postseason hopes could be extinguished by the end of the weekend.
A team that was 11{ games up in the second wild card in mid-June might not even be able to have meaningful games in the final two weeks of the season.
The aforementioned pitch to Cano, as so many on the night from Tanaka, was a picture of execution. After Seattle was held to one hit for the first five innings and falling behind 4-0, Mike Zunino led off the sixth with a double down the left field line. Tanaka came back to strike out Dee Gordon and Mitch Haniger swinging in two extremely unproductive at-bats. The Mariners' third hit of the game came when Jean Segura's hard comebacker ricocheted off Tanaka's glove, putting runners on the corners and bringing Cano to the plate to face his old team.
He fell behind 0-2 on the first two pitches. After watching Cano not chase a high fastball, Tanaka came back with a slider that started on the inner half of the plate and then cut toward Cano's back shin. Cano swung over the top of a ball that could have hit him. He was that fooled.
Tanaka worked two more innings, finishing with eight shutout frames, while allowing three hits with no walks and 10 strikeouts to improve to 11-5.
In the 100th start of his big-league career, James Paxton pitched six innings, allowing the four runs on five hits with a walk and eight strikeouts. He was pretty effective save for two pitches.
After a quick 1-2-3 first inning that needed just 10 pitches, Paxton quickly retired the first two hitters of the second. But Luke Voit muscled a 1-2 cutter into right for the first hit of the game. The next batter, talented rookie Gleyber Torres, pulled a 2-2 cutter from Paxton over the wall in left field for a two-run homer.
Paxton got bit by another two-run homer in the next inning. Brett Gardner led off the third with a single to left, setting up Andrew McCutchen for his first homer as a member of the Yankees. The former National League MVP, who was acquired Aug. 31 from the Giants, took advantage of a hanging breaking ball, slamming it over the wall in left center and into the Mariners' bullpen.
Two missed locations, two two-run homers and another defeat for Paxton, who fell to 11-6.
