Call it a…precap
The Mariners lost approximately 7-1 with shoddy Félix, bad offense, and maybe a hurt Dee. What you are reading now is sadly a work of necessary fiction.
Tonight we are doing things a little differently, as 5 (number of Dee gif-able moments per night) of Lookout Landing’s 83 (number of beers consumed by the LL staff per game) staffers are vaping in the park (slightly shady activity) tonight, so Kate and John are pre-typing this recap–let’s call it a precap–Mad Libs style, with blind input from the LL staff. It would be a little easier if the team were still playing the Angels, so we could just fill in [Trout] hit [eleventy billion] home runs but [the rest of the team] failed to score, but we will have to forge forward into the relative unknown of the Rockies lineup. It’s like Schrodinger’s cat, hopefully with the dingers being on the Mariners’ side of things.
King Félix was on the mound for the Mariners, and despite giving up four (plus one subtweet) (number of times Divish has referenced Segura’s oozy arm) hits in the first inning, he managed to get out of the frame without damage, because Jon Gray (Rockies player that is not Arenado or Blackmon) is having a disappointing season at the dish. For their part, after two quick outs from Gordon and Segura during which they saw just $7.82 (number of dollars in any given LL member’s 401K) pitches [“I don’t know what a 401K is”–Matthew], Denard Span mowed (a verb dads do) his way to first base. That allowed Nelson Cruz to come up, who would then hit a pitch 60 thousand(average amount of student debt owed by any given LL member) feet to stake the Mariners to an early 2-0 lead. Unfortunately, Kyle Seager would stop the bleeding there when he Roll Tided (a verb people do in the South) at a German Marquez pitch in the dirt for strike three.
The bottom half of the Rockies lineup went down dankly (PNW-appropriate adjective) in the second, but unfortunately, so did the Mariners, although Ben Gamel reached on a ”fighting the pitcher, who is also an alligator” (extremely North Florida way of getting on base). After a 1-2-3 third where Félix retired Designated Hitter Raimel Tapia (this one isn’t a Mad Lib, we promise), he ran into some trouble in the fourth, giving up a solo shot to Nolan Arenado that flew like Joe Wolf in a rainbow Denver Nuggets jersey (majestic Colorado sight), to bring the score to a much more tenuous 2-1. The Mariners were not able to do any more damage against starter German Marquez, despite some command problems that saw him walk 13 (number of outfielders at any LL softbaLL game) batters while striking out just 3 (bags of cotton candy consumed by Isabelle in one nine-inning game).
Marquez was finally bounced for pitch count reasons in the sixth, sending Colorado to the bullpen for one of their AL Central reliever imports. The demotion of Bryan Shaw to low-leverage landslide (type of natural disaster) man is a trip, but his ERA/FIP this season looks like Pelican Brief (real or plausible John Grisham book title) ran into a pile of the ooze from Nickelodeon. Seeing Shaw take the hill, Chris Herrmann’s Diamondbacks and Twins roots kicked into hyperdrive. His laced double just down the right field line plated two, earning him vengeance for the time he was robbed in a CVS at potato gunpoint (extremely Midwestern crime) by a man who then fled into the Colorado Coors’s (plural extremely Colorado geographical feature). At 4-1, Seattle seemed set, and Félix nearly pushed all the way through the 7th inning before exiting to a synergistic (adjective a tech-startup would use) round of applause.
He ceded to Juan Nicasio, who is working his way onto the Mount Rushmore of players for both the Rockies & Mariners organizations, just behind Jeff Cirillo, Joe Beimel, Seth Smith, & Butch Huskey (Four players who played for both the Rockies and the Mariners). Nicasio fell behind Ian Desmond, but induced a fly-out to Denard Span. He would remain in for the 8th, getting two quick outs before a chopper over his head seemed a sure-fire single. Dee Gordon, traveling via what appeared to be a hover-board (motorized mode of transportation), snagged the ball and nailed Ryon Healy for a narrow out call that left DJ LeMahieu hotter than an omelette cooked using vanilla creamer instead of milk (The most disastrous thing you’ve ever cooked). Seattle played add-on in the bottom of the frame, with Denard Span toddler’d (verb form of an attack with the most dangerous item you could lift in your immediate field of vision) a ball into the right field corner, advancing to third on a Nelson Cruz sac fly, and scoring when Kyle Seager Cheerio’d (verb form of an attack with the LEAST dangerous item you could lift in your immediate field of vision) a 2-2 curveball into left field, beating the shift, and sealing the ballgame. Nick Rumbelow worked around a 1-out walk to Arenado to pitch a scoreless 9th and give the Mariners a 5-1 win.
Tomorrow will be a hoot, with James Paxton on the hill. Hopefully it goes according to plan just like tonight.