This one stings.

The Mariners’ streak of 7 straight road series wins ended yesterday in brutal fashion, during a Bryan Woo start in which the M’s surrendered no earned runs and no runs at all after the first inning. Both runs and the loss derived from a swinging bunt chopped to the left of the mound with two outs and Altuve on first. I yelled at the TV “don’t hurt yourself, Woo” as he prepared to fling the ball to first, having reached it obviously too late. He no-looked pinwheeled it five feet past first baseman Donovan Solano and it kicked into the outfield for a three-base error: two for Altuve, who barely scored, and one for Walker, who reached second.

Woo should have put it in his pocket, an admittedly hard thing for a run-preventer to do. The ongoing argument of whether pitchers should just stop trying to field their position at all continues. Between the adrenaline, the grip, the injury risk, and the field awareness leading to bad judgment like this…? It’s a hard call.

The very next pitch was grounded hard at Leo Rivas, took a high hop, and squirted into right field for a run-scoring error. In looking at it repeatedly, it was a bit of a hard-luck error. Yes, he probably should have had the ball or at least knocked it down, but the second hop was unexpectedly high and his movement up was a nanosecond too late, getting under it instead of controlling the ball. Nevertheless, infielders (especially our left-siders JP and Ben) make the play all the time and I get the criticism. Two unearned runs in. Without either error, that’s fielded cleanly by Rivas and he chooses second or first base to make the third out of a scoreless first.

What happened next was an Arozarena leadoff triple (!) that was brought home promptly by a Garver groundout that would put us tantalizingly but ultimately frustratingly a run shy for the next seven mutually scoreless innings. Woo would pitch in and out of trouble all day without surrendering another score, securing his coveted sixth inning and AL-leading (tied) 8th quality start. Who is one of the four American Leaguers tied with him for this distinction? Opposing starter Framber Valdez. The run Framber gave up was earned and he also scattered four walks with his four hits. Woo gave up a staggering nine hits, mostly perhaps because he was unwilling to walk anyone. Far be it from me to criticize Mariners starting pitchers, but I do feel like both Woo and Kirby need to learn when to strategically throw a ball. Pitching is foremost about deception and if you can set your watch to throwing strikes, then you’re ultimately an online MLB The Show player, no matter how good your stuff is. There are worse crimes on the mound than throwing strikes. Like, say, flinging a no-look ball that you should eat instead.

I know, I know, too soon.

It’s easy to be frustrated about a 2-1 loss with the pitching staff (Legumina added two scoreless innings to ultimately finish an 11-hit loss and what would have been a bizarre 10-hit shutout without the errors). But of course, you should be scoring more than one run, even against Framber and the Astros’ excellent bullpen, and boy did the M’s have their chances in this one.

Most notably:

• In the sixth inning, Garver reached second with two outs. Donovan Solano was allowed to bat* and grounded out to short.
• In the eighth, Julio reached second with two outs. Mitch Garver was allowed to bat^ right-on-right and looked at strike three (on the corner). Jorge Polanco, Rowdy Tellez, and a red-hot Leody Tavares all sat with their left-handed bats on the bench while this transpired. Yes, Garver was catching, so Cal would have had to move in from DH and we would have needed to slot the pitcher into Garver’s spot (inexplicably, 5th) in the batting order. When your goal in the inning is to tie the game and maybe force extras, I get that’s a risk. At the same time, you have four outs left in a crucial game against your biggest division rival, so maybe get to a tough spot before worrying about it? Goldy made this same point on air about 20 seconds after I said it to my family.
• In the ninth, Donovan Solano reach first with one out. (I know. I know! I also thought it was impossible.) They even pinch-ran for this lumbering gentleman who makes Rowdy Tellez look fleet of foot. Then Ben Williamson got called out looking at a pitch that was fully a baseball-width outside the strike zone. And finally Leo Rivas looked at two pitches absolutely down the middle before swinging and missing at one up and away in the zone. Ballgame.

*Look, this was the only out Solano made today. He went 2/3 with a walk, raising his OPS a staggering 54 points in one game. Maybe he’s getting close to Figuring It Out. But it must also be observed that his OPS after the jump is just .385, comparable to JP Crawford’s OBP alone. And he continues to get at-bats, often high-leverage at-bats, and sometimes bafflingly pinch-hit opportunities for vastly more able hitters. It’s hard to believe that our existing bench bats plus Tyler Locklear wouldn’t be doing more and better for our division-leading team.

^Yes, Garver has been better lately. He gets on base a lot, mostly from walking, and reached base twice in this game to bump his OBP to an impressive .354. But he also Ks a lot, 25 times against his 15 walks for a 26% K rate. And his confidence in his hitting is so low right now that it seems he approaches high-leverage at-bats with the goal only of walking, which means he looks at strike three an uncomfortable amount. Sometimes it’s a borderline pitch, but it’s always painful.

Look, I’m not one to harbor superstitions about the past. While our history with Houston is surely checkered (as anyone who was a Mariners fan in 2022 can attest), we are 20-12 against the Astros since the 18-inning scoreless nightmare in Seattle that ended our first playoff hopes in two decades. While psychological intimidation can surely seep into people before they even reach the field (part of why the Yankees are so powerful), the M’s have stormed back against a Houston team that still has secured a better record overall in each of the ensuing years. Enron, er, Minute Maid, um, I mean Daikin (like the radish??) is not longer a “house of horrors” for us.

What remains to be seen, though, is whether this is a game we will circle in retrospect, one that wasted another Woo gem (admittedly, Woo himself wasted it with a non-pitch throw, arguably softening or hardening the blow) and left us vulnerable to a third straight year of missing the playoffs by a game. That’s a meme that’s taken root in the fanbase and has the chance to fester even while we nurse an ever-lengthening lead (remember last June!, the naysayers boom). So today becomes something of a must-win in the shape of a long season, important to secure a 4-game split with Houston, maintain our sterling record against the AL West, and keep this very strange incarnation of the Astros (no Bregman, no Tucker, no Verlander, no manager who has won a playoff game) at bay.

Meanwhile, we won’t dwell on this being the third such game in two weeks that we might reflect on if we fall short again:

• Houston 2, Seattle 1 on May 24
• Chicago (AL) 1, Seattle 0 on May 20
• New York (AL) 3, Seattle 2 on May 14

Conveniently, we’ve won all but one other game played in that span. And we’re still 90% to make the playoffs on Baseball Reference.

Mariners Stats:
Comeback Wins: 15
Wire-to-Wire Wins: 14
Comeback Losses: 12
Wire-to-Wire Losses: 10

Multi-Homer Games: 14-6
Single-Homer Games: 13-6
No-Homer Games: 2-10

One-Run Games: 10-7
Extra-Innings Games: 3-3
Shutouts: 1-2

Record When Scoring >5 Runs: 13-3
Record When Scoring 2-5 Runs: 16-10
Record When Scoring <2 Runs: 0-9

Consecutive Games in First Place: 23

Personal Stats:
Watched on TV: 6-12
Listened on Radio: 8-2
Mixed TV/Radio: 11-6
Followed on Gameday: 3-2
Limited/No Engagement: 1-0

I don’t know which fact is more predictably frustrating, that the M’s are 0-9 when scoring 0-1 runs or that they are 6-12 when I actually watch the full game. They are 19-8 when I have at least listened to some of it on the radio, which is something I should probably act on more. Much more crucially, they are 29-13 when scoring 2 runs or more!