How one at-bat sunk Kirby's start against the Padres?

SAN DIEGO -- Cal Raleigh kneeled behind home plate in what wound up being arguably the Mariners’ most critical pitching sequence in a 10-3 loss to the Padres on Wednesday afternoon, and he thrust his right index finger towards the dirt not once or twice, but six times, as he stared out at George Kirby.

The count: 0-2
The hitter: Juan Soto
The situation: Two outs and no one on, bottom of the third
The call: A deliberately spiked curveball attempting to get the former batting champion to chase
The logic: Sound

Kirby did just that, but Soto didn’t bite. San Diego’s slugging left fielder also watched the next curve land more narrowly below the zone, and the changeup after that did the same to run the count full, at which point he called time to process the offspeed-heavy at-bat. Anticipating more offspeed, Soto chipped a single down the left-field line.

From there, the Padres -- up only 1-0 -- were off and running.

Kirby then surrendered an up-the-middle single to Manny Machado to keep the rally alive, followed by a 414-foot three-run homer to Gary Sánchez that punctuated San Diego's breakout. Seattle’s bullpen also coughed up five runs and put the game out of reach early, and its bats managed just four hits.

“We're at the point in the season where you want to put a nice run together,” Mariners manager Scott Servais said. “You look at our team, and I think we're certainly capable of doing that, but it's a combination of things. You need to have consistent starting pitching. You need guys in the bullpen to step up, but ultimately, you've got to score runs. It's going to take more than four hits in a game -- any game -- to win it. And that's been the most frustrating thing.”

Kirby needed 27 pitches to escape that fateful third inning after getting ahead 0-2 on Soto, and he threw 37 overall in that frame. One night after J.P. Crawford almost single-handedly ballooned Joe Musgrove’s pitch count and led to an early exit, the Padres gave the Mariners a taste of their own medicine.

An inning later, Kirby gave up consecutive hits to Fernando Tatis Jr., Soto and Machado -- all with two outs -- that ended his day after 86 pitches and put a sour finish to what, on paper, looked like a strong matchup for a two-game Mariners sweep. Kirby, after all, was coming off eight scoreless innings against the Yankees on May 31, and his 2.34 ERA on the road entering Wednesday was the AL’s fourth best, behind Rangers right-handers Nathan Eovaldi (1.49) and Jon Gray (2.02) and Astros left-hander Framber Valdez (2.25).

Instead, Kirby gave up 11 hits, more than any other start in his pro career. And beyond Kirby, six of Seattle’s past seven losses have featured its pitching staff collectively surrendering at least 10 runs.

“They had a good approach all day,” Kirby said. “I didn't get ahead as well as I wanted to, and especially with two strikes, I didn't make good pitches.”

The sequence to Soto was an encapsulation of Kirby’s outing: pitching ahead, but generating no swing-and-miss from his secondary pitches.

Kirby went almost exclusively to his two- and four-seam fastballs the first time through the order, and it led to a double play and two impressive strikeouts. Overall, he generated 11 misses on 33 swings against the four-seamer for a rate of 33%, well above his 25.8% season average, per Statcast. He also experienced significant velocity increases on each by more than 1.4 mph.

But Machado’s knock was against a 97 mph heater that caught too much plate and Sánchez’s massive homer was against a 97.7 mph pitch on the upper rail, which Kirby said he wanted to go “probably a little higher.”

Kirby turned more to his breaking and offspeed stuff when the lineup flipped, beginning with a slider to Tatis that led to a groundout. But each of the four at-bats that ended on a Kirby slider or splitter from there led to singles, beginning with Soto’s game-flipping bloop and book-ended with Soto’s RBI single in the fourth that ended his outing. Making it sting more was that Soto was 4-for-29 in his past 10 games and finished with a career-high five hits.

Kirby was ticked, as he always is when he believes he underachieved. His reaction after surrendering a career-high-tying four homers two starts ago against Pittsburgh was even more terse than Wednesday’s, and he rebounded in a big way. The Mariners will need him to do so again.