SEATTLE — Jose Quintana pitched better than his line would indicate Friday night against the Seattle Mariners. But with the way right-hander Bryce Miller was pitching for the home team, the margin for error was thin.
One mistake pitch and two ground balls that found holes was all it took for the Mets to unravel. They fell 6-0 to the Mariners in the series-opener at T-Mobile Park, moving to 3-4 on the road trip.
“That’s baseball,” said shortstop Francisco Lindor. “Miller had good stuff today and he executed his pitches. We got a couple hits and had people in scoring position, but they executed whenever we had people on base.”
The Mets (61-55) went 0-for-8 with runners in scoring position. Quintana (6-8) was charged with five earned runs on four hits, walking two and striking out eight over 6 2/3 innings.
Up until the seventh, he had limited the Mariners (61-56) to two runs, with both of them coming off the bat of No. 8 hitter Ryan Bliss in the second inning. Bliss teed off on the first pitch he saw from the left-hander, a looping curveball to the outside part of the plate, and drove it over the fence in left-center field for just his second home run of the season.
“Early in the game, they got him on a get-me-over breaking ball,” said manager Carlos Mendoza. “But after that, he was really good.”
Quintana was excellent following the homer, retiring the next 14 straight and earning a chance to pitch into the seventh inning.
The Mets couldn’t do much against Miller (9-7), who blanked them for six innings, allowing three hits and a walk while striking out six in the win. Seattle boasts one of the best pitching staffs in baseball and they were as advertised. Right-hander Colin Snider put two on in the seventh with none out, but then induced a double play ball from Mark Vientos and got Francisco Alvarez to fly out to right field, protecting a 2-0 lead.
Quintana was trying to keep the game within reach.
“I always have confidence the hitters will come back in the game,” Quintana said. “If you keep the game close, you have a really good chance to come back. They hit well in one inning, they scored four runs. At some point, it’s going to happen for us too.”
With two on and two out in the bottom of the seventh, Quintana faced No. 9 hitter Leo Rivas, who was 0-for-2 against him to that point. But Quintana was already over the 90-pitch mark and Rivas made him work, battling him for six pitches before he hit a full-count changeup past a diving Jeff McNeil into right field. Both runners came into score and the Mets fell behind even further as the Mariners took a 4-0 lead.
Neither of the singles Quintana gave up in the seventh were hit particularly hard, but they were hit hard enough to do damage. The leadoff walk to Mitch Garver hurt him the most.
“If you get weak contact, that’s what you want,” Quintana said. “I think the issue was the leadoff walk. I can control that. That was a problem. After that, I got a ground ball, but it was too soft and we couldn’t get the out.”
Mendoza stood by his decision to leave Quintana in to face Rivas.
“It was his game,” Mendoza said. “That was his game there, especially with the way he was looking. That was his last hitter. A 3-2 changeup off the plate and he got a ground-ball and it just got through.”
A mustachioed Adam Ottavino took over for Quintana and struggled immediately. He snapped a streak of six scoreless innings. The veteran right-hander faced four batters before finally getting the third out, giving up a run and allowing an inherited runner to score. Ottavino, who has long had trouble controlling the running game, was visibly flustered after Rivas and Victor Robles executed a double steal. Rivas swiped two bags against Ottavino and Robles swiped one.
The Mets threatened in the eighth putting two on with two out against right-hander Austin Voth, but Pete Alonso struck out. In the ninth, J.D. Martinez led off with a double off right-hander Trent Thornton, but the Mets then went down in order with Francisco Alvarez striking out to end the game.
The Mets are at the end of a long, grueling road trip that has taken them through three cities and three time zones already. They’re in the home stretch, but it’s not going to get any easier against a tough pitching staff in a park that doesn’t lend itself to offensive production this weekend.
“At the end of the day, we’re big leaguers — we’ve got to go out there and make adjustments,” Lindor said. “I made my adjustments a little too late, but we’ve just got to find ways to score runs. It’s hard to win games when you don’t score.”