Rangers Lose To Mariners
SEATTLE — The Texas Rangers are used to games that see plenty of early offense turn into a one-sided affair.
They’re just usually not on the wrong side of it.
The Seattle Mariners turned the tables on Texas by using a big offensive night to roll to an 8-3 win over the Rangers on Wednesday night.
“Eight runs down early is a challenge,” said Texas manager Jeff Banister, whose high-octane offense was in the unfamiliar position of being in an 8-0 hole after four innings on Wednesday.
Mariners first baseman Adam Lind hit two home runs, including his fourth career grand slam, and Seattle starter Ariel Miranda held the Rangers (83-57) to three hits and three unearned runs in six innings.
“Obviously, the team helped me out a lot with some runs early, and that made it easy to be aggressive,” Miranda said through an interpreter.
Texas lost a game in the race for the American League’s best record, as the Rangers only lead Cleveland by two games after the loss. Texas has lost three of its past four games but still has a comfortable lead in the AL West race. Seattle (71-68) closed within five games of the second AL wild-card spot.
The Mariners used three home runs to storm out to an 8-0 lead before the Rangers got on the board with Carlos Beltran’s three-run homer in the sixth.
After an error on Seattle shortstop Ketel Marte kept the inning alive, Beltran hit his 27th homer of the season — and extended his hitting streak to 10 games — while bringing the Rangers within 8-3.
Seattle leadoff hitter Seth Smith went 3-for-3, scored three times and hit his 13th home run of the season.
“Any time you can get out front and give your pitchers some room to work, it’s good for everybody,” Smith said of the win.
Texas scored fewer than six runs for the first time in eight games. Rangers third baseman Adrian Beltre did not score for the first time in 12 games.
Texas used just three pitchers in the loss, including veteran Tanner Scheppers, who was making his season debut after February knee surgery.
“It was good to see Tanner back on a major-league mound,” Banister said.
Two nights after right-handed platoon hitters Franklin Gutierrez and Dae-Ho Lee led the Mariners’ offense to a win, their left-handed counterparts — Smith and Lind — carried the load from the other side of the plate.
Lind hit two home runs, including a first-inning grand slam, as the Mariners raced to an 8-0 lead over the first four innings.
After Marte put the Mariners on top 1-0 with an RBI single in the first, Lind took Texas starter A.J. Griffin deep for the fourth grand slam of his career.
The Mariners added a second-inning run on Nelson Cruz’s sacrifice fly before Lind went deep again, a leadoff shot in the third that made it 7-0. It marked the sixth time in Lind’s 10 major league seasons that he has hit 20 homers.
Smith’s solo shot in the fourth made it 8-0.
Griffin surrendered all three homers, allowing eight runs, seven hits and three walks in four innings before the Texas bullpen took over in the fifth.
“That first was a huge challenge for him,” Banister said. “The grand slam was a big blow.”
