You want to empty your home, you want to empty your life, of the 2026 Mariners, and we here at Lookout Landing Lacuna are here to help.
Hopefully you enjoyed the brief interlude of the Mariners winning a series against the Astros, as we’re back to our regularly scheduled programming of soul-crushing road losses with a 22-0 debacle against the Brewers. This game was close until it wasn’t, on paper at least, but with the Mariners offense flat in the first five innings of this game, a 1-0 deficit felt about as large as the eventual 2-0 deficit…then 6-0…then 11-0…then 22-0. I might have missed some in there. Honestly I sort of stopped paying attention, in the way that sometimes at the dentist’s office you transport yourself elsewhere mentally somewhere more pleasant. To paraphrase John Green a little, this game fell apart the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.
Or to paraphrase Charlie Kaufman:
The Mariners could have gotten on the board first in this one, with Brendan Donovan – whose bat continues to slowly heat up as he gets more regular playing time – led off with a double off lefty Kyle Harrison. But despite Donovan moving to third on a wild pitch, the Mariners couldn’t get that run across with no outs, as the top of the lineup went down in order after that – Randy Arozarena struck out, Dom Canzone grounded out, and Julio Rodríguez struck out one pitch after a pitch he should have walked on, a slurve well below the zone that was called a strike.
Meanwhile, the Brewers came out swinging hard against Bryce Miller, making the kind of early loud contact that has unfortunately been a hallmark of Miller’s outings lately. He got lucky with a couple of deep flyouts – one tracked down by an excellent route by Julio in center – but then hung a splitter to Jake Bauers for a double, with Bauers narrowly safe at second thanks to a strong catch and throw by Robles in right. Unlike the Mariners, the Brewers were then able to score that run; William Contreras turned on a sinker inside and did just enough to get it into left field. The slow-footed Bauers should have been out at home, but the ball popped out of Cal Raleigh’s glove when Bauers ran into Raleigh, earning Cal a tough error.
(Hilariously, at one point it looked like we’d debate that one run all night. That was before Julio Rodríguez threw a ball into the stands with just one out, allowing a run to score, and it somehow wasn’t even the worst thing to happen that inning. We were so young here, in this part of the recap. How happy is the blameless recapper’s lot!)
It wasn’t much easier for Miller in the second as he labored through the bottom half of the Brewers’ lineup; he worked around back-to-back one-out singles but the Brewers just weren’t fooled by anything; he had just four whiffs by the end of the second with no strikeouts; meanwhile, the Mariners had struck out four times by the end of the third. The Mariners allowing a starter to settle in after making some noise early? Color me sadprised.
Harrison had retired nine in a row by the fifth when Victor Robles worked a two-out walk and Brock Rodden knocked a ball up the middle that the shortstop was able to smother but not make a play on. Robles and Rodden then executed a risky double steal but Rodden was tagged out at second. Like the missed catch at home, at one point this might have made a difference in the ballgame. When I was young and upset, my mom used to tell me that one day, whatever intense heartbreak I was suffering would feel like nothing at all, that I wouldn’t even remember it. What she didn’t tell me was that the reason that would happen is because that sharp pain would be dulled by a lifetime of other, worse ones.
Once again, in a cruel mirroring, the Brewers got some traffic in the bottom of the inning after Miller had retired nine in a row himself, with Hamilton eking out an infield single Cole Young couldn’t quite corral, followed by a steal where he was narrowly safe. Maybe losing the handle a little, Miller went on to walk Brice Turang on four pitches and then the Brewers executed a double steal of their own, as if to rub the Mariners’ faces in their own failure in the top of the inning. Jackson Chourio then hit a little flyball single that dropped right in front of Julio for a 2-0 Brewers lead, doubling up what already felt like an impossible 1-0 deficit. Miller then fell behind Jake Bauers 3-0 before walking him, loading the bases for the dangerous Contreras. Miller was able to keep Contreras in the yard, limiting the damage to a sac fly, but that brought up Christian Yelich. Miller made a mistake with his splitter, and Yelich – although not the fearsome hitter he’s been in years past – jumped on it, demolishing the splitter on the plate 396 feet to double up the Brewers’ lead.
Postgame, Dan Wilson took accountability for leaving Miller in despite the hard contact the Brewers had been making off him all game: “It’s on me. I didn’t make the right choice.”
That’s where in a merciful and just world this game would have ended, with each side trading half-hearted blows and the Mariners quietly limping to a shutout loss. But this game was not merciful despite how much fans might have wished for a mercy rule, as the Brewers went on to put the kind of hurting on the Mariners that brings national attention (derogatory). If the Mariners must be bad, can’t they just be bad in peace and leave us safely below the radar of fans with access to gif toolbars? But no, they must make a big, unignorable pile of mess. In architectural terms, they somehow created an unholy trinity of the J.Edgar Hoover building (depressing), Trump Tower in Vegas (tacky), and DIA (ugly, confusing, likely haunted by a malevolent spirit).
The one thing that sucked about this game is it crushed underfoot one of the tender green shoots of hope I’d been nourishing for the back half of this season, namely that Josh Simpson Is Interesting. This felt much more like a spring training Simpson appearance, when he struggled to throw strikes. Things got
bad worse
from
here
to the point where I don’t want to necessarily detail them any more, and I don’t think you want to read about them. How much deeper can a hole be dug? To the point where Leo Rivas was standing on the mound in the eighth. The numbers just kept ticking up in the runs column for the Brewers until it sort of just felt numb. Just tiny little rocks. The 2026 Mariners: technically it IS brain damage.
“Obviously, it’s an embarrassing loss. We got our ass kicked,” said Bryce Miller postgame. “But at the end of the day, dwelling on it isn’t going to do any good. We gotta go back to the hotel, sleep, and come back tomorrow and play again.”
“Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders,” said Fredrich Nietzsche post-Enlightenment. Meet me tomorrow in Montauk Milwaukee.
Read the full article here
