The Mariners did not just lose to the Cubs on Sunday. They got steamrolled, 19-2, in a game that unraveled from a promising start into another brutal reminder of how rough this pitching staff has been lately.
For a few innings, it looked like Seattle might have something cooking. Randy Arozarena opened the game with a homer after going deep twice the night before, including the walkoff blast, and Victor Robles followed with a little old-school havoc in the second.
He walked, stole second, took third on a wide throw, and scored on the play. That was the good version of Robles, the one the Mariners have barely seen since 2024.
Bryce Miller, though, could not hold it together. He was fine through two innings apart from a stranded walk, then the third inning blew the game open.
With Seattle up 2-0, he left a curve over the plate to Michael Conforto, who turned it into a weak, shallow homer. Miller settled briefly with two quick outs, then lost the strike zone entirely.
Seiya Suzuki walked. Michael Busch walked.
Alex Bregman walked. Then Ian Happ hammered a splitter just inside the foul pole in right for a grand slam.
By the time Miller came back out in the fifth, the damage only got worse. He walked the bases loaded before recording an out, eventually got a groundout that brought home a run, and that was the end of his day. He finished with six runs allowed on two hits and seven walks, and he still didn’t make it through five innings.
“I just have to be more competitive,” he said after the game. “It’s felt like all of my walks in the last month or month and a half have scored, but when you have seven walks, I mean, what do you expect?
It’s super frustrating. Like I, I don’t feel like that team beat me at all.
I gave it to them. You get that many free passes, that’s what happens.”
Miller said the issue is staying locked into the pitch in front of him.
”I think the last month I’ve been kind of thinking ahead too much, and thinking of like, what do I need to do to this batter, the next batter, the next inning, to get out of this with a good line and keep us in it. That’s not what I do when I’m at my best. You know, it’s got to be this pitch, this moment, this at bat, one at bat at a time, one pitch at a time.”
It was another ugly outing for Miller, who also started the 22-0 loss earlier in the week. That game followed a similar script: he struggled to get through five, and the bullpen was left to absorb far too much.
Miller opened the season with electric stuff, but since the beginning of July his ERA is over 7. Asked whether a move to the bullpen could be coming, he said, “No, that hasn’t been a thing.”
Wilson, when asked the same thing, said, “We’re looking at all different options as we approach the end of the season here. We’re looking at everything.
Obviously we want to keep our rotation intact, but we’ll see how things shake down here in the next few days.”
The offense mostly disappeared once Seattle fell behind. From the fourth through the eighth innings, the Mariners had just one baserunner. Robles added another single in the ninth against a Cubs position-player pitcher, but that was it.
Chicago had already reached that point because the game was long over. Michael Rucker, who entered the day leading the staff in WAR since the All-Star break, took over in the eighth with the Cubs up 7-2.
He had not been part of the problem this season in the way so many others have been, but Sunday was a mess. After two quick outs, he gave up two singles, then a homer, then a single, a hit by pitch, and two walks.
By the time he was done, it was 11-2 and catcher Jhonny Pereda came in to finish the inning. Pereda allowed a single, then a grand slam, pushing it to 16-2.
Weston Wilson pitched the ninth and gave up three more runs.
The Mariners have now been beaten so badly twice this week that they were essentially out of it before the final outs were recorded. Their second-half pitching has been a disaster, and the numbers are as ugly as the eye test: minus-0.7 since the All-Star break, nearly a full win worse than the Rockies. Seattle opens a three-game series against the Phillies on Monday.
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