Seattle Mariners lose to Diamondbacks, fall to .500 on season

Tim Booth, The Seattle Times on Jun 11, 2025

Published in Baseball

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PHOENIX — Now it starts all over.

Remember when the Mariners were eight games over .500? Well, that’s gone.

That lead in the AL West? That was gone last week.

The momentum earned from that hot first six weeks, and a glimmer of optimism for the most loyal of fans? You know the answer.

For the seventh time in eight games, the Mariners walked back to the clubhouse losers on Tuesday night. This time it was a 10-3 thumping at the hands of the Arizona Diamondbacks before 25,140 at Chase Field.

Their record: 33-33. They’re 6-14 in the last 20. Their slide back to .500 is complete.

The loss ensured the M’s will lose their third straight series no matter the outcome of Wednesday afternoon’s finale. Remember when the M’s won nine straight series? That’s another forgotten thought, too.

So where do things go from here? The last time the M’s were at .500 was April 18 after losing in Toronto to fall to 10-10. They won 12 of the next 16. Can that happen again? There aren’t many positive signs that’s about to happen.

The offense has been mostly abysmal over the past month and especially underachieving the last three weeks when this slide back toward average truly began and the flaws many expected really started to emerge.

Entering Tuesday’s game, the Mariners were 25 th in runs, 25 th in walk percentage, 21 st in on-base percentage and were striking out the sixth most in the league over the previous three weeks. Their wRC+ during that span, which quantifies and normalizes run creation and where 100 is average, was exactly 100.

Sitting at .500 feels like their appropriate place in the standings.

But the pitching hasn’t been tremendous either. Including George Kirby’s 14-strikeout gem last Sunday in Anaheim against the Angels, the Mariners have received just four quality starts over the past 14 games. The bullpen has shown its share of issues as well, the latest coming in the sixth inning when Trent Thornton gave up four hits and five runs, including Gabriel Moreno’s three-run homer turned a 4-2 game into a 7-2 D-backs lead.

Logan Evans was responsible for one of those quality starts back on May 27 when he tossed his own gem against Washington going eight innings and allowing just one run in what was his last start with the M’s before being optioned to Tacoma.

He was back on Tuesday, called upon to make a spot start after Bryce Miller landed on the injured list again. Evans will likely be optioned again when Logan Gilbert is ready and this start didn’t come with the same success or satisfaction as his last one.

Evans (3-2) got through five innings, allowing four runs on seven hits. Corbin Carroll’s RBI triple was the big blow of the third inning and Lourdes Gurriel Jr. homered in the fourth to give the D-backs a 3-0 lead. Josh Naylor, the walkoff grand slam hero from the night before added an RBI double in the fifth.

Against the Mariners, that’s enough right now. Momentum might have been different if Gurriel didn’t rob Cal Raleigh of potentially his 27 th home run of the season with a runner on in the top of the third inning. Gurriel gave max effort to leap at the wall and pull back what appeared to be a homer.

Meanwhile, Randy Arozarena couldn’t be bothered to move when Gurriel homered an inning later, a ball that barely reached the seats making Arozarena’s lack of hustle more glaring.

Arozarena was responsible for giving the Mariners a spark with a solo homer leading off the sixth inning and Rowdy Tellez followed with a solo shot of his own. Both homers came on the eighth pitch of the at-bat and both after they had painfully fouled pitches off their legs.

Arozarena’s homer was his ninth and a 435-foot shot into the left field seats. Tellez’s was his 10 th and hit off the walkway above the pool in right-center field, and ended the night for Arizona starter Brandon Pfaadt, who shut out the M’s to that point after allowing 23 combined earned runs over his previous five starts.

The problem for the M’s again was their inability to capitalize early with runners in scoring position. The M’s had a runner at second base in each of the first five innings, but finished 1 for 12 with runners in scoring position. That one hit came in the eighth inning when Julio Rodríguez singled to score Ben Williamson and make the score 9-3.