Mariners drop first road series with 10-4 loss to Rangers

ARLINGTON, Texas — Sure, it was going to happen at some point this season. The Mariners weren’t going to navigate the 2016 road schedule without losing a series.

But losing that first series to the Texas Rangers, the team they are battling for the lead in the American League West, wasn’t preferable.

For the second straight night at Globe Life Park, and following a disturbing trend of late, the Mariners got a poor performance from their starting pitcher, putting them in a deficit that couldn’t be overcome in a 10-4 loss on Saturday night.

The Mariners (31-24) are two games behind the Rangers.

Seattle lost back-to-back road games for just the second time this season. Veteran right-hander Hisashi Iwakuma will try and give the Mariners a quality start Sunday in hopes of avoiding a sweep.

In the hours leading up the game, manager Scott Servais, who was celebrating his 49th birthday, mentioned that the best present he could receive was a quality start from his starting pitcher.

Nathan Karns became the latest starter to not make it at least five innings in his scheduled outing. Karns pitched into the fifth inning, but never recorded an out. He gave up seven runs on eight hits with five walks and five strikeouts and fell to 5-2.

Efficient isn’t a word to describe his outing. Karns was at 75 pitches after three innings. He finished with 93 pitches thrown, 48 strikes.

“We’ll get it turned around,” Servais said. “It’s just a frustrating stretch right now.”

It was the sixth time in the last nine games that a Mariners starter had failed to pitch six complete innings. Of those six sub-six-inning outings, the Mariners have won just one of them — the miraculous comeback win from a 12-2 deficit at San Diego. If the trend continues, this won’t be the only lost series for Seattle.

“It makes it tough on the offense, even as good as our offense has been,” Servais said. “It does suck a little life out of you. And it takes so much pressure off the other pitcher when he’s got three, four, five runs to work with early. He can go to all of his pitches and he’s not on edge. We like the guy to be on edge when we are at the plate.”

Texas’ Martin Perez worked six innings, allowing three runs on nine hits with a walk and a strikeout to improve to 4-4.

For the fourth consecutive game, the Mariners’ opponent held a three-run lead after the first inning.

Jurickson Profar led off with a double to center that Shawn O’Malley couldn’t come up with on a dive for the line drive. Ian Desmond followed with a bunt single without a play on the ball. It appeared that Karns might limit the damage to one run after Nomar Mazara’s sacrifice fly to left field and Adrian Beltre’s fly out to center. But Rougned Odor, playing in his first game back from his eight-game suspension, blooped a single into shallow left field to put runners on the corners. Both runners scored when Ryan Rua bounced a ground ball just past Kyle Seager down the third-base line for a two-run double.

“Just a tough inning,” Karns said. “I thought I was making some quality pitches. You can’t do anything about Odor’s bloop double on an up-and-in pitch, then you get a tightrope double down the line. It’s one of those things that’s tough to get through, but I’ve still got to get through that.”

Twice the Mariners trimmed a run off the lead only to see Karns give one back in the bottom half.

“For some reason, I just lost my fastball command after that first inning,” Karns said. “I was cutting it, sinking it and it was doing stuff that I’m not normally used to it doing.”

Vidal Nuno gave up an RBI single to Mitch Moreland and then served up a three-run homer to Elvis Andrus to make it 9-3.