Hit me up if you need kick-ass headline writing like this!  I’m available for parties, weddings, bar mitzvahs …

It’s the weekend and there’s gonna be lots of football to get to in the next couple days, so I’m not going to break my back recapping these defeats to the Astros.  As usual, the bad guys got a quality start out of one of their plethora of aces on staff; the only difference in this loss (by a score of 8-6) is that the Mariners were able to get to their bullpen a little bit and make it interesting in the later innings.  Or, you know, you could just say we gave someone in their ‘pen a free Save Situation and call it a day.

The Quality Start streak for Erasmo Ramirez ends at six.  But, you know, who could blame him?  He just saw the Astros a couple weeks back; it’s not like they weren’t gonna adjust to whatever he was throwing at them the second time around.  I guess the downer about this one is that our own bullpen couldn’t hold things together.  Nick Vincent – on a horrendous fucking run of bad outings (at the worst possible point in the season, I might add) – gave up another couple hits and a run in his inning of work.  And, for some reason, Scott Servais decided to work newcomer Ryan Garton like a fucking dog this month (already 8 appearances in 15 games since being acquired from the Rays).  To his credit, Garton was damn near perfect until today, when he too gave up a couple hits and a run in his inning of work.

So, there’s your ballgame, in other words.  I’ve been harping on it all season:  for the Mariners to make the playoffs, they’d need their offense to hit the shit out of the ball, and they’d need their bullpen to be mostly perfect.  When those two components are lacking in any way, it’s a recipe for disaster.

There’s another one of these fucking things tomorrow morning.  We get another look at Andrew Moore in the rotation.  Should be interesting, considering he’ll be one of many rotation candidates for 2018.  Sad to say we’re already in “Watch For Next Year” mode, but at some point we’ll stop kidding ourselves and point our focus on the AAA guys who might help us out next season.  Here’s to the Blue Jays, later today, beating the Twins and delaying the inevitable!