Poor outing from Triston McKenzie puts Guardians on their heels in series-opening loss to Mariners

CLEVELAND — Things got ugly early for the Guardians at Progressive Field on Tuesday night. Starting pitcher Triston McKenzie allowed four runs in the third inning of his shortest outing of the season and Cleveland never recovered, falling 8-5 in the opener of a three-game series against the Mariners. First-place Seattle hit three home runs and six doubles, extending its win streak to four games and improving to 8-1 over its last nine games. Meanwhile, the Guardians lost their third straight and for the fourth time in five games. In his 14th start of the season, McKenzie made it only one out into the third, walking four batters and allowing a two-run homer to J.P Crawford. "He had trouble getting ahead. He had trouble with command. A leadoff walk every inning," manager Stephen Vogt said of McKenzie, who has notched only one win since April 19. "The first time through the order, he wasn't getting ahead, so first-pitch strikes weren't there. The command just wasn't there and they took advantage. "I think, tonight, we had six or seven walks. Nine of their 11 hits were for extra-bases. We were giving them baserunners and they did a good job of cashing in with some extra-base hits." "I thought my delivery wasn't really synched up," McKenzie said. "My velo was a little bit up but my movement down the mound wasn't the same. After losing the last two games, I wanted to put my best foot forward. I didn't give the guys my best effort, in my opinion." After missing nearly most of last year, McKenzie is still trying to find his groove. "I think it's growing pains. I think it's something different every start," he said. "I think everybody kind of goes through it, but I'm not trying to take last year into account. It's just where we're at right now." The Guardians struggled early against Mariners starter Bryce Miller, who entered the night owning a 3.48 ERA over 14 starts and without a loss since May 22. Cleveland mustered only three hits over the first five innings, squandering an opportunity in the second after loading the bases with no outs and only scoring once on a fielder's choice ground out from Daniel Schneemann. The Guardians finally got to Miller in the sixth, scoring twice on a two-out single from Will Brennan and a throwing error on the pitcher on a pickoff attempt at first. Brennan had three hits — all singles. "He was great," Vogt said of Miller, who allowed two earned runs on six hits, two walks and two hit batters. "He's got the hesitation in his windup and was able to really keep us off balance, to keep us off the fastball. I thought we had decent at-bats off him. We ended up chasing him out of the game in the sixth, but he was really good tonight. "We just didn't get the big hit tonight. We were close to outhitting them or just about even, but there's were for extra bases. Ours weren't. There's the difference in the game. They cashed in their opportunities and we didn't." Miller departed after walking Schneemann with two outs in the sixth and the Mariners in front 7-3, but the Guardians again showed their resiliency, scoring four times over the final four innings to get within striking distance. "We didn't play a very good game tonight, but again, this team fought back," Vogt said. "We had the tying run up multiple times against a very good pitching team. We don't quit and I think that's something to hang our hat on. It's the one thing we can really take away from tonight. It would have been real easy to get on our heels." Steven Kwan extended his streak of reaching base to a career-high 23 games — longest by a Cleveland player since Carlos Santana's 30-game streak in 2019 — with a single in the seventh to extend his hitting streak to 12 games since leaving the injured list. Jose Ramirez recorded the 1,400th hit of his career with an infield single in the seventh. At 31, Ramirez joined three others in club history — Joe Sewell (1,800 from 1920-30), Ken Keltner (1,504 from 1937-48) and Lou Boudreau (1,636 from 1938-49) — to reach 1,400 hits before the age of 32. Contact Chris Assenheimer at (440) 329-7136 or cassenheimer@chroniclet.com. Like him on Facebook and follow him @CAwesomeheimer on X.