Padres bash Maurer

Eric Wedge said that this game is Brandon Maurer's last chance at saving his position in the rotation. Maurer knew this and started out his night very well getting out of a few jams and not allowing a run in the first three innings. The Mariners got Maurer a run in the bottom of the second inning and at first it looked like the Mariners were going to win their third game in a row. The inning started off with Kendrys Morales extending his hitting streak to 6 games by getting an infield hit, very shocking huh; a big guy like Morales getting an infield hit. Mike Morse and Michael Saunders were both able to draw walks off Edinson Volquez. Nick Franklin was unable to get a hit as he grounded out and Yonder Alonso threw out Morales at home but Franklin was still able to make it on first to keep the bases loaded for the Mariners. Jesus Sucre drove in the first run in for the Mariners by hitting a long fly ball out to Will Venable scoring Mike Morse from third.

Maurer gave up his first runs in the top of the fourth by giving up a two run homerun to Jedd Gyorko and the Padres took the 2-1 lead. In the bottom of the fourth Morse singled up the middle with one out to bring up Saunders, who has been struggling mightily up at the plate, was able to drive one to right center field and third base coach Daren Brown stupidly sent Morse running home and on that play Morse both was thrown out at the plate and injured himself on running. Morse would leave the game with a left quad strain and will remain in Seattle on a day-to-day injured list. That inning ended after Nick Franklin struck out, Franklin had a tough first MLB start going 0-4 and making a fielding error.

Maurer gave up another homerun but this time a solo shot to Alexi Amarista, putting the Padres lead to 3-1. The Padres finally drove Maurer off the mound and in shame in the top of the sixth. Yonder Alonso and Yasmani Grandal both singled with one out, Maurer threw a wild pitch that moved both runners up. Gyorko walked and following that Mark Kotsay singled to center driving in both Alonso and Grandal putting the Padres lead to 5-1 and after that manager Eric Wedge saw enough and brought in Danny Farquhar to relieve the young blunder of a pitcher. Now as I said in the paragraph above Franklin made an error in the sixth that allowed one more run to come in increasing the Padres lead to 6-1.

The rest of the night speaks for itself. After this game I believe that Wedge and the Mariners are fed up with Maurer's mediocrity and poor control of his pitches. Maurer leads the league in wild pitches after tonight's game along with not even being ranked in the top 105 pitchers in ERA! That means he has the worst ERA in the majors among starting pitchers with a 6.93 ERA. In my opinion Maurer basically screwed himself out of a job with the Mariners for now, I believe that Maurer will not make the trip down to San Diego tonight with the team and Jeremy Bonderman will be brought up from Triple A Tacoma along with Horacio Ramirez being brought up from Double A Jackson. Maurer was brought up too early and needs to spend more time to develop.