Can Mariners build on series win over Astros with a positive road trip?

BALTIMORE — If you are what your record says you are, as manager Scott Servais often likes to say, then for just over a month, from April 26 to May 26, the Mariners were the worst team in Major League Baseball.

During that span, Seattle played 28 games and won just seven times, failing to win back-to-back games and winning just one series against the Mets, who were 21-7 over that same stretch. The Mariners were outscored 93 to 144. The offense posted a .229/.301/.360 slash line over that time while the pitching staff’s earned-run average during that stretch was second worst in MLB.

Yes, a team with the oft-said goal to build off 2021’s 90-win season, which included postseason expectations in 2022, played worse during that stretch than organizations like the Oakland A’s (10-19) and Cincinnati Reds (11-16), who started fire-sale rebuilds this offseason, and the Orioles (12-16) and Pirates (10-16), who seem to be perpetually rebuilding.

The Mariners were headed slowly on a long road to nowhere.  

With a weekend series vs. the Astros, a team that’s handled them more often than not, any anticipated success was minimal. The familiar dark clouds of summers without hope were starting to build amid the constant gray and rain of this abysmal spring.

A sweep or even series win by the Astros wouldn’t end Seattle’s postseason hopes, but it would only increase an already unwieldy burden for a bounceback to relevancy. Certainly, all that was said about being committed to win and the direction of the organization would be untenable.  

Instead, the Mariners blasted four homers off Justin Verlander in a stunning 6-1 victory Friday. They followed that up by riding Logan Gilbert’s brilliant starting pitching to a 6-0 shut out Saturday. It was the first time they’d won back-to-back games since April 24 and 26, and it gave the Mariners their first series win since taking two of three vs. the Mets at CitiField. So amid all that losing, their series wins came over division leaders with their aces on the mound.

If not for the inability to hit with runners in scoring position, failing to push across one or two more runs when possible, the Mariners might have had a series sweep of Houston.

“I’m really happy with the way we’ve bounced back after a rough start to this homestand, playing the way we did,” Servais said. “If we continue to do that, we’ll be fine going forward and certainly as we head out to this road trip.”

That’s no small “if.”

It’s fair to have questions about this team’s expected success, or lack thereof, going forward

Have the Mariners really turned a corner? Did the series of success and quality baseball against the Astros — perhaps the best three-game stretch they’ve played since the first homestand of the season — portend better days ahead?

Was it due to the players turning up the dial on their intensity as Servais mentioned after Saturday’s win?

Which might make some fans wonder: Shouldn’t that dial have been cranked up a little sooner instead of waiting for the embarrassment of losing two of three games to what’s left of the Oakland A’s?

It’s also fair to believe that the series was an outlier performance, briefly breaking up the bad baseball only for moment, with inconsistent play to return in the coming days.

This upcoming road trip, well, at least the first six games, should be telling about the Mariners level of intensity and the quality of play.

Seattle opens with the nine-game, three-city trip with three-game series vs. the Orioles at Camden Yards followed by three games at Globe Life Field vs. the Texas Rangers.

The key to Seattle’s success in the series was starting pitching. Chris Flexen, Logan Gilbert and Marco Gonzales each pitched at least seven innings, allowing one run or fewer. That isn’t easily replicated on a game-by-game basis.

But those three starters along with Robbie Ray are capable of delivering a quality start (six innings pitched, three runs or fewer allowed) on a more consistent basis. With the Mariners watching his workload closely, George Kirby’s outings could be shortened out of caution not struggles.

Even with a quality outing, there is no guarantee for success given the Mariners bullpen issues and inconsistent production on offense.

Searching for trusted performers from the eight-man bullpen to protect a lead, consists of Paul Sewald and Sergio Romo and to a lesser extent Matt Festa with youngsters Andres Munoz and Penn Murfee earning more trust. The Mariners method of winning games last season: relying on Sewald, Drew Steckenrider, Casey Sadler and occasionally Anthony Misiewicz to cover the final three innings of a game with a lead isn’t an option due to injuries and ineffectiveness.

Servais is sort of cobbling it together, trying to find matchups and lower leverage for Munoz and Murfee and turning the high leverage over to the veterans.

Maybe Steckenrider relocates his missing command in Class AAA Tacoma, eventually Ken Giles, who started a rehab assignment, will make his Mariners debut and Erik Swanson, who was highly effective before elbow discomfort put him on the injured list, could return to help the team.

As for the Mariners offense, the most notable juxtaposition was the lineup with Kyle Lewis in it and the lineup when Lewis is absent from it.

Lewis homered in the first two games of the Astros series and provides another power bat to help alleviate the lost production when Mitch Haniger got hurt. But Sunday, he was scratched from the lineup as part of maintenance on his troublesome right knee. He wasn’t even available to pinch hit in a 2-1 loss.

Having Mike Ford or Luis Torrens at designated hitter instead of Lewis is a significant drop in talent and potential.

“He brings more fear to our lineup,” Ty France said. “Having him back, it helps all of us honestly. We know we got another guy that can go out and at any moment do damage.”

But he won’t be available at any moment.

Realistically, Lewis might only be able to play 4-5 times per week. His knee simply won’t allow him to play more than that without leading to pain and possible extended absences.

“We knew that when we did add him to the roster, there was going to be days he was going to be down,” Servais said.

So when there were multiple times in Sunday’s loss where Servais would’ve happily pinch hit Lewis, he couldn’t. It was either Cal Raleigh or Dylan Moore as pinch-hit candidates or let Ford hit.

“Yeah you’d like to plug him in there at a key moment,” Servais said. “But I’ve got to stay true to what we decided we would do when he when he came back. So that’s what we did.”