Mariners: 4 takeaways from sweep by the San Diego Padres

The Seattle Mariners face more uncertainty after suffering a second consecutive sweep, this time at the hands of the San Diego Padres.

The hits keep on coming for the Mariners, but unfortunately for them we mean in the metaphorical rather than literal sense. They have now suffered the ignominy of two consecutive sweeps, as their season goes from bad to worse.

Against the Padres, the series started off in disastrous fashion with a 16-1 thrashing on Friday night. Into the bargain, the 15-run win for San Diego equaled a franchise record at Petco Park.

The second game was the only one the Mariners had a chance to win at the end. However, despite bringing the tying run to the plate in the ninth inning, they fell short in a 6-4 defeat.

The situation seemed promising for a while in the series finale, as Seattle were tied 1-1 after five innings. However, any chance of salvaging a game fell apart as they allowed seven combined runs in the following two innings.

As a result, the Mariners are now on their first six-game losing streak of the 2021 campaign. After a promising start to the season, they have dropped five of their previous six series.

Next up is a three-game road series versus the Oakland Athletics, who currently lead the AL West. First things first though, here are our takeaways from the three-game set in San Diego, including a review of the vaccination controversy:

4) Flexen suffers career-worst outing

As we’ve written before, in our opinion Chris Flexen has been the best pitcher in the Mariners’ rotation so far in 2021. However, this didn’t count for anything on Friday night.

Flexen could not have picked a worse time for his poorest start of the season. In fact, it proved to be a career-worst outing for someone who had been a nice surprise for Seattle this season.

With all the adversity the Mariners had faced of late, the 26-year-old was meant to provide some reliability; the ball club had won six of his previous seven starts this season. Instead, he endured a nightmare when he was needed most.

Flexen actually entered the bottom of the first with a 1-0 lead, but Trent Grisham promptly tied the game at 1-1 with a home run. The Padres would go on to score three more times, to end the first with a 4-1 lead.

Just as concerning, it took Flexen 41 pitches to get through the first inning. The situation didn’t improve for him in the following inning.

The dangerous Fernando Tatis Jr. hit his 11th home run of the season to bring in three more scores. It also represented a milestone for Tatis Jr. as the 50th home run of his Major League career.

Tommy Pham added another run before manager Scott Servais mercifully ended Flexen’s evening, despite still having one out remaining in the second. Given the situation with the bullpen – more on this shortly – you know the decision was not taken lightly to remove a starter so soon into a game.

As it was, Flexen ended the night having thrown 67 pitches in less than two innings. Only 40 of them went for strikes and the 1.2 innings represented the shortest start of his career.

Talking of career marks, the eight earned runs allowed were the most ever for the former New York Met. He had previously given up seven earned runs on two occasions during his rookie season in 2017.

In addition, the 10 hits tied a career high for Flexen. As a comparison, the two previous times he allowed 10 hits this season, the opponents scored one and four earned runs respectively.

While not renowned for his strikeouts, the Newark, California had just one on the night, to give him three overall in his last four outings. During his first four starts of the season, he averaged 5.25 strikeouts per game.

Flexen was asked by the media how the COVID-19 situation impacted the game, but he made no excuses for either himself or the team. He said:

“I know we lost some key bullpen guys so that definitely hurts us, but at the same time we had plenty of other guys trying to find a way to get it done. We just didn’t get it done tonight.

“We got off to a bad start on the pitching side obviously. We were able to put up one in the first and I wasn’t able to hold it down after that.”

Flexen provided more detail about what went wrong for him personally and how he will respond to what happened against the Padres. He said:

“I felt my stuff was good, but my location was terrible. I threw a lot of borderline pitches that they either took or were able to find a hole, and then when I missed over the plate they got hammered.

“… I don’t think we go to the drawing board yet. I think it’s something where you prepare for the next one and continue to grind and keep working.”

NEXT: MISTAKES PROVE COSTLY