The Seattle Mariners will go for a sweep of their two-game series against their “natural rival” Padres on Wednesday afternoon in San Diego.
If a two-game winning streak doesn’t seem like much, you haven’t been charting the roller coaster ride that has been the San Diego season.
The Padres haven’t won two straight games since May 25-26. In fact, San Diego has had just a pair of two-game winning streaks over the past 28 games. The team’s longest winning streak of the season is three games.
The past eight games have been maddening. Not only have the Padres gone win-loss, win-loss, throughout, but they have gone good game/bad game on offense. The run performance over the last eight games: 9-1-10-1-6-1-5-1. That’s 30 runs in the four wins, four runs in the four losses.
“Frustrating,” Padres manager Bob Melvin said Tuesday night after his team’s 4-1 loss to Seattle. “We play a good game and then don’t follow it up. It’s about performing in the game. We haven’t been able to do it consistently. We had opportunities tonight and didn’t cash them in.”
If you’ve heard that before, it’s because Melvin has been saying much the same thing every other night for the majority of the season.
Meanwhile, Seattle manager Scott Servais was taking note of how his ballclub stepped up Tuesday night to end a three-game losing streak. The Mariners had lost five of their previous six games — after winning six of seven.
“We had a streak there where we gave up 10 or more runs four times in a span of six games,” Servais said. “We lost two games at home to the Yankees, then got swept and outscored 30-9 in Texas. That’s not what we’ve been. So it was great to see us play a solid, all-around game against the Padres.”
On Wednesday, George Kirby (5-4, 3.04 ERA) will start for the Mariners against the Padres’ Michael Wacha (5-2, 3.48) in a clash of right-handers who have experienced just one bad start apiece since the beginning of May.
Kirby, 25, blanked the Yankees on three hits and no walks while striking out seven over eight innings in his most recent start, on May 31. In his prior outing, Kirby gave up seven runs on nine hits (including four home runs) in 4 2/3 innings against the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Kirby, who has never faced the Padres, was the Mariners’ first-round pick (20th overall) in the 2019 draft. He has a 1.014 WHIP and a .244 opponents’ batting average this season. Kirby has 58 strikeouts against six walks in 71 innings and leads the major leagues with a 9.67-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio and with an average of 0.8 walks per nine innings.
Wacha was the National League Pitcher of the Month for May. In five starts, he went 3-0 with a 0.84 ERA. However, in his first June start, Wacha gave up two runs on three hits and five walks in 4 2/3 innings to take a home loss against the Chicago Cubs on Friday.
The Padres are 7-4 in Wacha’s 11 starts this season. Overall, Wacha has a 1.145 WHIP and a .224 opponents’ batting average. He is 0-3 with a 7.92 ERA in six career starts against the Mariners.
–Field Level Media
