Mariners score 4 runs in 4 innings off Yu Darvish, take series from Padres

SEATTLE — The Padres lost to the most consistent starting pitcher in the major leagues.

And they continued to get uneven results from their own starting pitchers.

On the strength of four runs in four innings against Yu Darvish — and primarily on the strength of Eugenio Suárez, who hit a three-run home run in the fourth inning — the Mariners beat the Padres 4-3 on Wednesday in the finale of a three-game series that continued the American League team’s recent domination of the interleague “rivalry.”

The Padres actually had their best game among the three times they have faced Bryan Woo and were the first team in his 26 starts this season to get him out of a game before the sixth inning ended.

But two runs in the sixth inning against Woo and a run in the ninth against closer Andrés Muñoz left them a run short, as they lost to the Mariners for the fifth time in six games this season and 14th time in 18 games since the start of 2022.

The far more pertinent issue — barring the Vedder Cup foes meeting in the World Series — is the Padres’ rotation riding a rollercoaster.

Wednesday was the third consecutive game Padres manager Mike Shildt was into his bullpen before the fifth inning was over.

He took Darvish out Wednesday before the fifth began, a day after Dylan Cease allowed four runs in 4⅓ innings.

“It’s going to be important,” Shildt said of getting more consistent length from starting pitchers not named Nick Pivetta that the Padres are counting on to be effective. “I mean, we’re going to get to a time where, yeah, we can go to the bullpen super early. But you’re talking about Yu Darvish and Dylan Cease — guys that we have a lot of trust and confidence in. And the ability for those guys to go deeper is going to be important for the continued freshness of our bullpen.”

This run of short starts comes after the Padres got five quality starts over a six-game stretch last week. And that followed a series in Los Angeles where they went with a bullpen game in the opener (after Michael King was placed on the injured list) and got a total of 7⅓ innings from Cease and Darvish the next two days.

On Wednesday, Darvish was coming off arguably his best start among the nine he had made since starting the season late due to an elbow issue. In his last start on Friday, he allowed the Dodgers a solo home run and no other baserunners over six innings.

After surrendering four hits and walking one against the Mariners, Darvish said, “The movement on the pitches, off-speed, it’s there. I feel good where I’m at.”

But what happened Wednesday continued a trend of alternating excellent starts with ones that are not.

After shutting out the Mets over seven innings on July 30, Darvish surrendered three runs in four innings against the Diamondbacks on Aug. 5. The Giants scored once against him in six innings in his next start, on Aug. 11, before he allowed four runs in four innings against the Dodgers on Aug. 17. Then came the rebound against the Dodgers last week.

He entered Wednesday with a 1.04 ERA in four starts against the Mariners since he joined the Padres in 2021.

Suárez was the catalyst for changing that.

In the second inning, Suárez lined a one-out single softly to left field, stole second and scored when Luke Raley drove a full-count curveball to the gap in right-center field with two outs.

And after Julio Rodríguez singled and Josh Naylor walked to start the fourth, Suárez launched a home run over the left field wall on a first-pitch cutter in the heart of the strike zone, giving the Mariners their 4-0 advantage.

“I hate to keep saying this, but it is that one pitch that cost me,” Darvish said. “… When I’m good, even if you make a mistake, they would foul it off. But an instance like today, I make that one mistake, and they get all of it.”

From there, it was a largely familiar path for the Padres against Woo.

Unlike Monday’s 9-6 defeat, Wednesday went down more like how they have usually lost to the Mariners over the past four seasons. That is to say, they were held down by an excellent starting pitcher.

The 25-year-old Woo lowered his ERA slightly to 2.95 and saw his WHIP inflate a hundredth of a point to 0.95.

The Mariners taking two of three this week follows their sweep at Petco Park in May in which the Padres scored a total of three runs.

One of those games was started by Woo, who allowed a single run over seven innings.

His only other start against the Padres had come here last September. That night, he took a perfect game into the seventh inning before Fernando Tatis Jr. hit a home run and the Padres ended up scoring two runs before Woo departed with two outs.

Wednesday, the Padres had three singles and a walk in the first five innings before scoring twice in the sixth.

The second run in that inning scored after Woo left with the bases loaded and reliever Gabe Speier promptly hit Jake Cronenworth.

With six singles and a walk, the Padres had two more baserunners Wednesday than in either of the first two starts Woo made against them.

After going down in order against Matt Brash in the seventh and Eduard Bazardo in the eighth, doubles by Cronenworth and Tatis off Muñoz got the Padres to within a run in the ninth before Ramón Laureano grounded out to end the game.

That left the Padres in danger of falling two games back in the National League West, pending the Dodgers’ result against the Reds on Wednesday night, and it kept the Mariners at least three games up on the Royals in the race for the American League’s final wild-card spot.

“Two really good teams,” Shildt said. “Just went toe to toe. Some big swings were the determination on both sides of it, quite frankly. But man, hard fought. I mean, I love this team so much — the way they compete, the way they’re getting after it. Went toe to toe and outside of one big swing, I thought we played a really good baseball game.”