The Mariners would kill for a case of the runs

Seattle is 3-29 when it scores fewer than four runs, but it's not the winning percentage that points to the problem. It's the frequency with which they've failed to score four in a game.

Smell that Seattle? Yeah, it’s the Mariners most recent home stand, which wrapped up on Sunday with the Mariners getting shut-out for the third time in eight days.

Yeah, it’s getting bad. If Seattle came back from its last road trip riding a wave of momentum, having won four straight series, it limps on out with a fair number of people wondering if someone is going to get offered up as ritual sacrifice. And honestly, I think we’re beyond the hitting coach here. That’s what teams typically resort to, and I’m not sure there is a more trivial gesture than to fire the hitting coach of a big-league club that’s not hitting.

Logan Gilbert continues to look good. He gave up a two-run home run to Mike Trout, but that didn’t exactly make him unique. Trout homered in four of the five games in the series between the Angels and the Mariners. In fact, those four homers scored the winning runs in each of the Angels’ four victories in the five-game series, and I’d love to make some snide joke about choosing to pitch to Trout in the 10th inning of the extra-innings loss on Saturday, but that would just be kicking a team while it’s down. Walking Trout to get to put an extra runner on base for the reigning American League MVP seems like the least of the problems the Mariners are dealing with right now.

But this morning, I’m going to focus on the benchmark of four runs, which has been offered up as some sort of weather vane for success with regard to these Mariners. It’s not as meaningful as some people seem to think because four runs is a general threshold for success, not a specific one.