Astros punch back, beat Seattle 11-3 in series finale

M’s take care of business against Hunter Brown but can’t finish the job

What was billed as the pitcher’s duel of the series certainly began that way. All-Star fastballers Hunter Brown and Bryan Woo cruised through the first two innings, with an unconvincing single in each half-inning the only hiccups. But the Mariners offense interrupted that narrative in the third and fourth, stringing together baserunners and eating up Brown’s pitch count. A big hit from Jorge Polanco in the third and one from Julio Rodríguez in the fourth staked Seattle to a three-run lead and had all of Mariners fandom feeling like this:

Bryan Woo turning in a five-pitch, three-easy-groundball inning between the outbursts only added to the feeling that the Mariners might just pull off a sweep of the Astros and pull within two games in the AL West.

Things got messier after that. Woo opened the fifth with a leadoff walk, which we know to be a bad idea. That runner would come around to score—as so often happens—on an error from J.P. Crawford—as almost never happens. A wall-ball double off the bat of Cam Smith scored another pair of runs to tie the game. It turned out that the fifth-inning leadoff walk would be better than how Woo opened the sixth, with a home run by Christian Walker, giving the Astros a lead they’d never surrender. Woo managed to finish the inning, keeping alive his streak of going at least six innings in every game this year, but not before giving up another dinger to the only guy on the Astros I’m willing to feel happy for, Taylor Trammell.

Despite being down 5-3, the game did not feel out of hand with the Mariners having chased Hunter Brown after just four innings and digging into a Houston bullpen that had thrown 127 pitches just 15 hours earlier. But they were unable to get anything going in 1.2 innings against Kaleb Ort until Master Bunny hit a ball that caromed off third base. Good Bunny. J.P. Crawford came through with a double, but Master Bunny, who’d been playing an excellent game, was caught at the plate with a terrible slide that ended both the inning and his chance of getting today’s Sun Hat Award. Bad Bunny. (The Sun Hat Award has to go to someone, so Polanco gets it since his two-RBI single was also the hardest hit ball of the day.) After the out at the plate, the Astros put the game out of reach by tagging on another four runs against Casey Legumina and two more off Juan Burgos.

So notwithstanding a six-inning start from Bryan Woo and the offense getting ten hits to go with four free baserunners, the Mariners were bricked today, 11-3. That’s why even though you can bill a game as a pitcher’s duel, you still have to actually play it. It’s a reminder worth heeding as the Brewers roll into town.