Mariners: Not All 1-0 Home Losses Are Equal

In the 35 years since then-U.S. Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson seemingly cursed the franchise with his ceremonial first pitch April 6, 1977, the Mariners have played 5,611 games, 2,993 of them losses. The Mariners failed to score a run 337 times in those games, including Wednesday night at Safeco Field when they went 0-for-9 with runners in scoring position and left 10 stranded in a 1-0 setback to San Diego.

In their typically informative package of post-game notes Wednesday night, Mariners stat gurus pointed out that the club has now lost 18 games at home (Kingdome and Safeco Field) by a 1-0 score, the last, before Wednesday, on July 2, 2011. The Padres also administered that defeat.

All 18 of the Mariners’ 1-0 losses in Seattle would seem to be the same, except that they aren’t. Wednesday night’s was the worst, and not only because the Padres came into the game batting .229 as a team. The Padres also entered the contest 18.5 games behind the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League West.

Never before have the Mariners lost 1-0 at home to a team that far behind in a divisional race.

“Offensively, we’ve just really got to figure this out here at home,” manager Eric Wedge said after Seattle’s fourth consecutive defeat, two of those to the fifth-place Padres, and eighth in the last nine home games. “I mean, it’s no secret. We’ve shown what we’re capable of doing on the road. We’ve just got to work to help these guys get over the bump here at home to where we can go out there and be the offensive team that we’ve shown to be very capable of being.”

Interesting use of the word “bump,” considering that the Mariners are batting .199 at Safeco and averaging 3.07 runs per game, vs. a .257 average and 4.81 runs per game on the road.

No edition of the Mariners has ever hit as low as .199 at home, not the 2008 Mariners (61-101), who hit .258, or the 2010 Mariners (61-101), who hit .235, or even the 2011 Mariners (67-95), who hit .222.

The following chart lists all 18 of Seattle’s 1-0 losses at home, and is ranked according to the winning team’s deficit in its division at the time of the game: