Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - MARINERS POSTCAST: Seattle Mariners CHOKE AWAY BIG GAME vs Houston Astros

Starting point is 00:00:04 This is the Mariners Postcast. Your instant game reaction for the Seattle Mariners. Part of the Locked-on Podcast Network, your team every day. It's just not their season, guys. It's just not their season at all. This is a great encapsulation of the Mariners' 2026 season. And what a devastating way to mark the beginning of the biggest, series of the year.

Starting point is 00:00:40 And it felt like it was one of those moments where they finally figured something out. They, even with a tough George Kirby start and you go down five to two early on, they battle back, get the lead, get the insurance run that you need. And then the 10th inning happens. Just, just crazy, man. It's just crazy. We'll get into Munoz because I have takes on that. We're going to start with the start with George Kirby.

Starting point is 00:01:18 First of all, this is the Mariners Postcast. I'm still trying to get my thoughts together. I'm sorry after watching that. I had my entire like spiel ready to go and then everything changes in like two minutes. So this is the Mariners Postcast. My name is Anderson Hurst. You can catch us after every Mariner baseball game. We're going to start with the start.

Starting point is 00:01:39 We'll talk about George Kirby's start today. It wasn't very good. The offense, actually a very good day today offensively, and not just from scoring runs and getting hits, but doing little things as well. We'll talk about our unsung hero. We'll talk about the bullpen. I'm going to do something a little bit different.

Starting point is 00:02:01 Let's start with the end of the game, because I think that's what everyone wants to talk about or think about right now. Andres Munoz, that home run to Christian Walker, that pitch, was the first bad pitch of the entire inning. You can say what you want about Houston's ability

Starting point is 00:02:24 to put the ball in play. The two hits from Varsho and Altuve, there is absolutely nothing you can do as a pitcher in that situation. And that's going to happen. the life of a reliever, right? That's the life of needing the swing and miss. But man, just just a devastating kind of way to go out. It's giving me flashbacks to when the Mariners went to Houston last year and swept the

Starting point is 00:02:56 Astros with the Victor Robos diving catch. This is in the opposite direction, obviously, with Christian Walker and that walk-off home run. I just, it's tough. It's, it's, tough. I don't think there's a lot you can blame with the manager today. Now, the bigger picture stuff, the kind of sleepwalking through a lot of the season that obviously still gets looked at for sure. But I think Dan Wilson made all the right decisions today about when to pull George Kirby, going two innings with Edward Bizarro, especially how good he looked in his two innings that he pitched. You had Munoz with a two-run lead in the 10th inning.

Starting point is 00:03:44 It's the exact situation that you want. And unfortunately, and again, I don't even think he pitched that poorly. It's just you get two cue balls that just kind of rule, like that ties the game. And then, of course, yes, the pitch to Christian Walker was a hanging slider. That was a terrible pitch. And he took advantage of it. But it's just an encapsulation of the Mariners season at this point, guys. Everything that can go wrong is going wrong.

Starting point is 00:04:14 And even when you feel like you're about ready to kind of have a statement victory, get yourself ready for the weekend in terms of a possible, like, pull yourself up series here, either a series win or a sweep by doing what you did today, it would have felt so good. You go up to zero. Astros take the 5-2 lead in the second inning of George Kirby's implosion there. And then you claw your way back. You inch your way back.

Starting point is 00:04:52 Victor Robles gets a couple RBIs. Brock Rodden with the game tying RBI in the eighth, and then the insurance run in the 10th, like so many good moments, and then it gets pissed away. And honestly, like, I can't blame the defense. I can't blame Dan Wilson. It's just that's how baseball works sometimes.

Starting point is 00:05:17 One bad pitch is just so, that's how it goes. And that's what happens when you dilly-dally your way through the first four and a half months of the season. So that's where you left yourself with zero margin for error. And it would be nice to either be tied or a couple games ahead of the Astros right now. And that game would be like, all right, no big deal. We'd come back and still win two out of three. And you still can do that.

Starting point is 00:05:46 But now the best case scenario, and again, I don't know if this team is going to be able to recover from that. But best case scenario is you just gain one. game on the Astros and your five games behind them. Actually, now six. So you would go six and then you'd go back to five if you win tomorrow and then go to four if you win on Sunday. I don't know, man. That feels like the nail in the coffin on the 2026 season. It really does. I've said they've looked dead for a while, but mathematically it still has been possible. When you have a game like this where you actually do a lot of really good things.

Starting point is 00:06:30 And you still can't get it done and you lose in that devastating fashion. That's that's kind of a symbolic thing that's going on here. And that tells me that this is just isn't our season. So, um, okay. Let's start with a start like we normally do here, Mariners Postcast. Um, George Kirby. I mean, really, it was one bad inning. But that bad inning costs them.

Starting point is 00:07:00 Big time. And costs him not just in his line, but in his inability to even get through five innings. He goes 4.2, 8 hits, five runs, all earned, three walks, two Ks. That's just not a George Kirby line that I'm used to seeing. And it's really, it's all in that second inning where all the damage is done. He does okay and kind of working his way through, but still not efficient today. not like George Kirby that we're used to seeing where he can get through six and seven with a breeze with one or zero walks. It's just not it, unfortunately.

Starting point is 00:07:44 And again, he's been pitching so well as of late. That's just where it is. It's where the Mariners are right now. I'm struggling to come up with more words to describe where this team is. at, but man alive. Yeah, you needed George to get through more there, but again, you set yourself up well. I mean, Rucker pitches well, Spire pitch as well, Bizarro pitches extremely well, and you get Munoz in the 10th inning, and he can't get it done.

Starting point is 00:08:20 It's just, it's a devastating way to lose, guys. And again, I don't even, he had one bad pitch. the other two just are just the most I don't want to say lucky because that's a skill putting the bat on the ball don't get me wrong but as a pitcher you made the perfect pitch and that's going to happen sometimes right would I like to see the Mariners do that more offensively

Starting point is 00:08:46 yes but I'm I'm not going to say that Munoz just he couldn't do anything on the mound tonight that's not true he looked like he was he was dotting that fastball and the slider was getting, you know, you get a weak ground out from Yorna Alvarez, the strikeout to Taylor Tremel.

Starting point is 00:09:08 I mean, but that's the life of a reliever, man. And again, this is what happens when you leave yourself zero margin for error. So Mariners lose this one, 10 to 7. They go up to zero, then they go down 5 to 2. They claw back to get it back to 5 to 5. get it to seven to five in the 10th inning, and then they give it away in the bottom half of the 10th inning to give up five runs.

Starting point is 00:09:33 Yeah. Let's take a quick break. We'll come back. We'll discuss a little bit of the offense. Let's discuss a couple of the positives today. Brock Rodden, fantastic. Victor Robles, loves playing in this park for whatever reason. We'll try and get some positive signs from this game.

Starting point is 00:09:53 hopefully come back tomorrow and get the dub. But let's turn it around and talk a little bit about the positive side of things here. On the Mariners Postcast after a devastating 10 to 7 loss against the Houston Astros. Can we talk about liver? It's your body's filter processing. More than 500 functions every single day. It involves things like energy production, digestion, fat metabolism, and vitamin storage. so it's doing a lot of work behind the scenes.

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Starting point is 00:12:04 But then in a huge moment, gets the game tying RBI double in the eighth inning. As I mentioned, the Mariners were clawing themselves back into this game. He did a fantastic job all game long to try and get them back into this. And not only that, he then gets the insurance run with the sacrifice fly after Victor Robles' triple. in the 10th inning. And that should have been enough.

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Starting point is 00:13:58 Download the GameTime app today. Welcome back, Manor's Postcast. Anderson Hurst here. Just a devastating loss, 10 to 7 against the Houston Astros. And what looked like, I struggled to say the turning point because we've said that so often this year. But you definitely felt like this was a series that guys were getting up for. And yes, it shouldn't take a big series for them to get up for this, right? They should be doing that all season long. But you look at the game in front of you.

Starting point is 00:14:32 I'm just reacting to this game right now. um yes george kirby struggled in that second inning um but the ability to you know continuously kind of put at bats together i mean you get multi hit days from randy dom canzone josh naler um uh and victor roblis with multi including Julio uh and cow raleigh as well getting two walks today. And then Brock Rodden, obviously, with a huge hit and then a sacrifice fly as well. You got what you needed from the lineup today. It's just so frustrating when, and even the bullpen as a whole, I'm not even going to say it was bad because you get great outings from Michael Rucker, from Gabe Spire, from Edward Bizarro, especially. And Edward Bizarro is going to be

Starting point is 00:15:24 my unsung hero of the show today. He's obviously going to get overlooked. Everyone's going to look at the Munoz situation, blowing the save in the 10th inning. But Pizarro going two innings and just looking dominant is a huge step because he had looked really bad up until now. So hopefully that's a turning point for him in terms of kind of getting back on the horse and being a guy you can trust in high leverage situations. But, I mean, the end of the day, you end up blowing a lead. And I even said that Munoz threw probably one bad pitch.

Starting point is 00:15:57 I maybe you can amend that statement the single to Paredes was also not the greatest pitch he doesn't do as much damage with it obviously but do two bad pitches in an inning man and he he dominates Jordan Alvarez and just weakly rolls over it who's just been the boogie man for all MLB teams this year great stuff against Tremel

Starting point is 00:16:24 I mean the Altuve at bat that's just Jose Altuve. Unfortunately, there's nothing you can do as a pitcher there. Maybe you can throw it two feet above the strike zone and trust your fastball a little bit more. I did notice that the last couple batters, it was all sliders,

Starting point is 00:16:38 but it feels like that was his kind of his game plan, and it felt like they were chasing, and they were. For whatever reason, they just were able to put their bat on the ball. And that's going to happen. Unfortunately, I've always been a fan of when he kind of used more of the fastball. That's when he's at his best.

Starting point is 00:16:56 best and trust your heat and then the slider plays off of that even better instead of trying to pitch backwards. But I mean, it's just, it's a terrible loss. I really hope the boys can bounce back from it, but it feels like that was the nail in the coffin on the 2026 season. You're now six games back in the AL West. I'm not even going to do the wild card because the ALS is what matters right now. You've got seven teams battling for one spot in the wild card.

Starting point is 00:17:24 So you're not only going to have to go on a run. going to have to hope a lot of other teams don't. This felt like a door open, and it felt like if you were to get this win today, you could start to, I don't want to say, believe again, but bring people back on board and, you know, at least tell yourselves as the players that, you know, this is attainable, like, especially if we go and win two out of three or even sweep, which you can still win two out of three. You can come back and this game would be a footnote if you go and win the next two.

Starting point is 00:17:56 two games. So that is going to be my lasting kind of final word today. If you go and win the next two games, this will not be a game that people necessarily, immanently, unless you miss the playoffs by one game, uh, look back on. Um, but if you, I think people would have taken winning two out of three going into this series. So you could still do that. Let's do it tomorrow. You, now you've literally put yourself in a must win situation because if you lose this series, I think it's GGs. Uh, so we'll talk to you after that game tomorrow. Five o'clock again, first pitch. We'll talk to you after that one.

Starting point is 00:18:32 Hopefully we have a different outcome. Boy, these games in Houston, between the Astros and Mariners the last few years, I've just been devastating for one side and just absolute, you know, if you're a neutral, it's what you look for. But we'll talk to you after the game tomorrow. Appreciate all y'all. Like the video if you haven't already. We'll chat with you a little bit after the game tomorrow.

Starting point is 00:18:52 Hopefully we're talking about a different outcome. but Mariners lose 10-7 Munoz blows the save Brock Rodden, well done on your first MLV game, first MLB hit, first MLV RBI, first game with multi-RBIs, lots of first there,

Starting point is 00:19:08 and seeing the family there was awesome. Hopefully, hopefully, hopefully you still win two out of three. We'll talk to you tomorrow.

Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - MARINERS POSTCAST: Seattle Mariners CHOKE AWAY BIG GAME vs Houston Astros

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