The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

If the Oakland A’s hadn’t put together a thirteen-game winning streak, the Mariners would still be first place in the AL West. The Mariners are only two games behind the A’s in the standings and would have been only a game back if not for a bad eighth inning against the Orioles on Monday, a game they were leading 1-0. It was a bullpen game in which the Mariners used seven different pitchers. Injuries to starting pitchers Marco Gonzales and Nick Margevicius have the team scrambling a bit to get another pitcher stretched out enough to start games for them. Margevicius is on the ten-day injured list with left shoulder inflammation, and Gonzales is on the ten-day injured list with a left forearm strain, but he is already throwing again off of flat ground and should only miss a few starts.

The Mariner’s bullpen is continuing to surprise this year and has pitched to a 9-5 record with a 2.56 earned run average over 112.2 innings. That’s good for a tie for first in wins and third in ERA in the American League. Their starters haven’t been as good. They pitch to a 7-9 record with a 4.90 ERA; only the Angeles starters have a higher ERA at 5.76.

Yusei Kikuchi had a great start this past week against the Houston Astros, where he pitched seven innings, allowing only one hit against the Houston Astros in a game the Mariners would win 1-0. The only hit for Houston was a Carlos Correa double in the seventh inning. Kikuchi’s pitch count was at ninety-five after the seventh inning, so it is doubtful manager Scott Servais would have allowed Kikuchi to continue pitching much deeper into the game even if he still had a no-hitter going.

After Seattle finishes up the remaining games with the Orioles this week, they start a five-game road trip where they play Texas Rangers for the first time this season for three games, then the Los Angeles Dodgers for two games. The big test in the upcoming schedule will be from May 24th – June 6th. These fourteen games will be against just American League West opponents, including a home and away series against the Oakland A’s, who the Mariners haven’t seen yet. What Seattle’s record looks like after those games and whether they have brought up top prospects ahead of these games will determine whether this team can contend this year.