One of the most frustrating features of the 2026 Mariners has been their inconsistency. They’ll have a great homestand just to muddle through a poor road trip; work a hard-fought series win only to drop the next two; and most frustratingly, follow up a fun, vibes-cleansing win like last night’s game with a real stinker like tonight’s.
To be fair, the odds were stacked against them in this contest: the combination of the Mariners’ allergies to scoring runs when George Kirby is on the mound against the Orioles (averaging less than a run per game of support in his past eight outings!) plus Kyle Bradish and his deadly high-slot curveball plus some absolutely dogwater (hi Angie) BABIP luck for the Mariners made this game an exercise in misery – a misery that was compounded when Julio Rodríguez was lifted in the sixth inning for a defensive replacement. Dan Wilson clarified postgame that it was a hamstring spasm for Julio, tweaked on a leaping play in the sixth, and he’s currently day-to-day.
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To be fair, Julio might have just wanted a mental break – the Mariners hitters suffered mightily against Bradish, who came an inning and an out shy of a complete game against a Mariners lineup missing a fair amount of its punch with Luke Raley and Josh Naylor still out and the recent loss of Randy Arozarena to the 10-day IL.
Sometimes the Mariners have bad and brutal at-bats, and we may shame them for that; but sometimes you just get beat by a pitcher who’s really on his game. That was Kyle Bradish tonight, whose bemused, befuddled, and downright bedeviled the Mariners hitters. Some hitters did a better job laying off the pitch, especially in two strike counts, but it was a lot of flailing after curveballs that showed on Gameday as subterranean but must have looked very different in the batter’s box, judging from the quality of swings.
Some of the Mariners did have some success laying off the pitch as the game wound on, and managed to scrape a run off Bradish in the fourth thanks to an adjustment from Julio, who laid off the curveball that gave him trouble earlier and was rewarded with a sinker in the fat part of the plate that he clobbered for a double. He was then knocked in on a well-struck single from Dominic Canzone, who took advantage of a first-pitch sinker at the top of the zone, shooting it right back up the middle.
But that’s all the Mariners would work off Bradish tonight, who departed the game with two outs in the eighth and a runner on (Miles Mastrobuoni, doing his daily Useful Thing by hitting a single), giving way to Yennier Canó. Canó walked Cal, who had just missed a homer earlier – robbed at the wall by former Mariner Tyler O’Neill, adding indignity to indignity – to get to Rob Refsnyder, pinch-hitting for Julio. Refsnyder popped out to end the inning, because that was the only way that at-bat was going to end.
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The Orioles, meanwhile, got all they needed in one swing of the bat. George Kirby was good but not perfect, and unfortunately, given that the offense stubbornly refuses to score runs in support of him whenever the team plays Baltimore, that wasn’t enough for a win. Like Logan Gilbert did last night, Kirby found success leaning on his fastball, using it to get ahead in counts, and then would dial up the sweeper as a putaway for both whiffs and weak-contact outs.
Kirby made two mistakes that cost him: the big one came early, in the third, when with two outs he left a four-seamer directly in the lefty loop zone for Gunnar Henderson, who punched the ball over the right-field wall for a two-run shot. It was a two-run shot because nine-hole hitter Blaze Alexander was on with a seeing-eye single off a well-located pitch from Kirby – a bit of bad BABIP luck but magnified by the poor pitch to Henderson.
With the Mariners offense unable to do anything against Bradish, that would have been enough, but Kirby made one more mistake on the day, in his last inning of work. It was almost a mirror image of the previous score: with two outs, Pete Alonso made contact on what might have been a check swing and rolled a snowball down the third-base line, allowing even the slower-footed Polar Bear to reach first. Kirby then got into a protracted battle with former Mariner Leody Taveras and in a full count left a sinker on the plate that Taveras demolished over Julio’s head into the deepest part of the park for a triple. It was a disappointing end to an otherwise solid outing for Kirby, who expressed frustration postgame with the mistakes and said he just had to be better.
“There are two pitches I’d like to have back,” he said.
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Three runs over six innings shouldn’t be a prison sentence for a pitcher, although the bullpen couldn’t keep it there: Alex Hoppe issued a leadoff walk to Jackson Holliday, who later came around to score, and in the eighth Michael Rucker allowed a solo homer to Holliday, continuing to roll out the Mariners welcome mat for the struggling second baseman. (The bright spot sandwiched in here is another scoreless appearance by Nick Davila, who has not allowed an earned run over his first 11 appearances with the club.)
The due of Dominic Canzone and Cole Young tried valiantly to turn around the vibes in the bottom of the ninth, going back-to-back off Ryan Helsley, recently re-activated from the IL.
But it was too little, too late, and the Mariners once again find themselves searching for consistency with a bruised and busted roster and a pitcher who wears three runs over six as a personal failing. It’s somehow both inconsistent, and the same old story.
