Ugh. The first two weeks of the year were an unabashed joy to follow, but of course the Mariners weren’t going to play at a .867 clip all year. Of course regression was coming. Of course they weren’t going to put up bunches of runs each night. We know all this!
But man, aside from a couple of neat moments, this was an objectively bad baseball game.
Mike Leake did look pretty crisp in the first three innings, needing just 29 pitches to carve through Cleveland’s lineup. He allowed a leadoff hit twice, once to old friend Leonys Martín to begin the game and again to Jake Bauers in the third, but erased both on pretty double plays.