Mariners and George Kirby go through Nightmare in Sea-land

The GuarDededeians take series, smash Mariners with big mallet

One of the appealing natures of video games, and mobile gaming in particular, is the exercise of control. You control characters, vehicles, or more vague perspectives to play in a world of imagination. You control when and where you get to play, as well. As long as you have a charged battery. There is a similar beauty in baseball. 162 games gives you, the fan, some semblance of control. If your team is consistently good enough, it is easy enough to control your level of enjoyment. Watch the fun games, turn off the ones that aren’t. Imagine you were the video game character though. Imagine you were, let’s say, Kirby. Your adventures in Dream Land, when you are forced to see them through until your player is sated, where you keep taking damage at every turn but have no choice but to keep advancing, would quickly become a Nightmare.

That was probably how the Seattle Mariners felt in today’s loss to the Cleveland Guardians, who they hosted in the final game of the series, game three at T-Mobile Park, losing the game in an embarrassing shut-out, 8-0. We can choose to turn the game off, we can leave the stadium, but the Mariners had no choice but to play through all nine, grueling, shut-out innings. For 3.2 innings, George Kirby was stuck in a Nightmare. Eight earned runs, on ten hits. Only two strikeouts, but hey, no walks. I want to tell you that Furious George wasn’t entirely at fault. Good news, because enough balls ricocheted off the ends of gloves, he had every right to be mad at the infield defense.

But as much as it was frustrating to see balls collide off of gloves instead of in them, part of it was neither Kirby’s fault, nor the defense’s.

The Guardians were the beneficiary of some serious xBA luck, and we'll get back to that, but also... Furious George is likely a little mad at himself, as well, and it is not unfounded.

George Kirby’s strategy revolves around him finding the zone and fooling batters with a combination of sequencing and stuff. The Guardians strategy is centered around contact, making as much of it as possible and blooping and blooping and (maybe) blasting their way onto the scoreboard. These two strategies coming to a head could have easily worked in Kirby’s favor, but not with the infield defense that was behind him today, and especially not with the sheer amount of contact he allowed. Kirby, the video game character, was a notable standout among his platforming peers around the time of his debut. Mario and the like could jump, but Kirby could jump and float. That freedom of movement can be a safety net. At any time you are beginning to fall towards an enemy or hazard, a single button press can save you. But it is a delicate dance, the motion requiring more rhythmic presses, easy to use, but difficult to master. George has this in common with his name twin. His command of his pitches allow him to dance, float, just out of reach of danger. But, the slightest slip and he is in trouble. Watching him today was like watching a Kirby that could only jump.

Watching the Mariners offense was like watching the Game Boy run out of batteries on the first level.

Perhaps it isn’t fair that it feels like that. Perhaps it is. The Mariners drew four walks, and the eight strikeouts was an improvement over recent games, but their five hits paled in comparison to Cleveland’s eleven. To Seattle’s credit though, luck was a factor. No, not some nebulous agent of fate. Luck, in the metric sense. The probabilities were problemabilities for the Mariners tonight. The Mariners expected batting average, or xBA, was .211 for the night. That is exactly the number that Cleveland posted.

It was just not the Mariners night. Crawford was one of the better players at the plate, going 1-for-2 with a walk, but exited the game early after an ugly play that saw Polanco colliding with him hard. Luke Raley took his spot in the rotation in the ninth inning, and worked a double, but it amounted to nothing. France went 1-for-4, extending his hitting streak to six games with a single in the fourth inning. Luis Urías had a 1-for-3 night, with a double and a walk. Polanco singled in the sixth inning. Haniger and DMo each worked a walk. And that was it, that was the offense.

Of course, without games like this, we wouldn’t get the joy of position players pitching. In this case, it was Josh Rojas coming in to work the ninth, and even able to induce a double play to get out of the inning.

Life is not a video game. Our feelings rarely perfectly reflect reality. If you watched the entire game, it may have felt like you were stuck. The Mariners may have felt trapped, unsure how to end the level. The baseball season comes with 162 reset buttons, and the Mariners still have 155 of theirs left to use. Kirby will rarely, if ever face a contact heavy team quite like the Guardians. The defense will rarely be that bad. The offense probably won’t continue to be that bad or that unlucky. The next time, hopefully, the Mariners will remember to finesse when they float.