“It’s not a place you want to come into having lost, I don’t even know — what is it 15?” infielder Adam Kennedy said. “It just doesn’t get any easier.”
Eventually, it will. And (eventually), the Mariners will win. They will, right? But until they do, they will evoke some of the modern era’s worst teams — like the 1988 Baltimore Orioles, who set the American League record by losing 21 in a row, or the 2005 Royals, who dropped 19 (straight). That particular comparison is perhaps a bit unfair. That Kansas City team was already 25 games under .500, at 38-63, when its spiral began. The Mariners, after beating Oakland on July 5, were 43-43 and a surprise contender in the A.L. West, sitting two and a half games behind Texas and the Angels for the (division) lead.
“I don’t think that we were probably as good as we were back then,” the first-year manager Eric Wedge said. “And we’re (definitely) not as bad as we are right now."
As Wedge spoke in his office Monday afternoon, the television showed an episode of “Law & Order: SVU.” The Mariners’ play recently has been just as gruesome, but bereft of suspense. A year after (scoring) 513 runs, the fewest in a nonstrike season since 1971, the Mariners are on pace for 533, the fourth lowest over that time. In the streak’s first nine losses, they failed to hit a home run and scored a total of 11 runs. In their next six, they scored 29 but allowed 46. Their team batting average during their losing (streak) was .226, though four regulars Jack Cust, Justin Smoak, Kennedy and Chone Figgins are batting under the Mendoza line in this time, or perhaps more fittingly, the Figgins line, which he has set at .182.
