Fans’ ‘Let’s Go Mariners!’ salute after final out can’t change overswinging, season ending

This taut series. The epic, historic, final game of it. And the Mariners’ long, wondrous season.

They were all over.

Julio Rodriguez lined out as Seattle’s final hope to end the 18-inning stress test of attrition in Game 3 of the American League Division Series, the longest scoreless playoff game in Major League Baseball history. It began Saturday early afternoon and ended Saturday night.

For about 60 seconds after the final out of Seattle’s crushing, 1-0 loss to Houston, the 47,690 Mariners fans who had been roaring, dancing, chanting for more than six hours — since 9:30 in the morning — were silent. They were stunned.

Then, they were proud.

As the Astros celebrated in the middle of the M’s diamond, hugging and laughing all over the infield, Seattle’s fans exploded in yet another huge roar.

“LET’S GO MARINERS!” they chanted, over and over.

“You can’t say enough about Mariners fans,” first baseman Ty France said after he went 1 for 7, with one of Seattle’s mere seven hits to go with 22 strikeouts over 18 innings. “They’ve been through a lot the last 21 years. So they deserve this.

“For them to show up and be on their feet screaming for 18 innings, just goes to show how great they are. We’re very fortunate that we get to play in front of them, 81 and more times a year.

“It meant a lot to us that they stuck around and were as loud as they were.”

If only the Mariners’ bats had brought any noise to the first 1-0 game in Mariners postseason history.

Mariners hitters overswing

As this scoreless grudge match trudged on, as the stadium did a second seventh-inning stretch in the middle of the 14th, some already dubious approaches from Mariners hitters got worse.

Just about every Mariner repeatedly tried to pull every pitch into neighboring Lumen Field or onto Interstate 90, to end the game with a dramatic home run. Approaches of hitting up the middle or to the opposite field, to go with the Astros’ repeated outside pitches instead, to work to just get on base? Those were as rare as stadium silence Saturday.

The louder the fans got, the more the Mariners seemed to overswing. They tried too hard to end it with one hack.

It began looking like Beer League softball. But against hard, world-class pitching.

It included Rodriguez popping up twice in extra innings to Houston infielders, to end the 10th and leading off the 16th.

In between, Rodriguez worked a two-out walk from Astros reliever Hunter Brown in the bottom of the 13th. Then he stole second. That gave Seattle its only runner in scoring position between innings nine and 17.

But France then pulled a hard ground ball that Houston third baseman Alex Bregman fielded deftly. He threw out France to end the 13th.

The Mariners were 0 for 8 with runners in scoring position.

After Rodriguez popped out to shortstop to begin the bottom of the 16th, France tried to pull a 98-mph fastball from Houston’s Luis Garcia that was a foot outside. Of course he struck out.

It was one of a major-league postseason record 42 strikeouts by both teams Saturday.

Did the Mariners’ hitters begin pressing and change their approaches to home run or bust as the game wore on?

“There might have been some,” France said.

“I mean, that’s a great pitching staff over there. Hats off to all the pitchers today, on both sides. They did a great job. ...

“Yeah, anytime you go into the dugout in the bottom of an inning chasing one run you feel like you can end it. So I think every single inning we were going in there thinking we were going to end it.”

Paul Sewald’s redemption

Meanwhile, the Mariners’ pitchers threw the most scoreless innings imaginable, 17 of them.

Rookie George Kirby followed up his victorious major league debut coming on in relief late in Seattle’s two-game series sweep of Toronto in the wild-card round last weekend with an absolute gem in Game 3 of the ALDS. The 24-year-old shut out the Astros’ hellacious lineup on six hits with no walks, five strikeouts and two hit batsmen.

Most of all, he neutralized Houston’s Yordan Alvarez.

Spotting 96-mph fastballs and 95-mph sinkers, he got the Game 1 and Game 2 Mariners killer to pop out in foul territory and fly out. The one time Alvarez led off an inning against Kirby, the rookie hit the slugger with a 2-1 curveball into his leg. He pitched right around that.

Then came 10 innings of scoreless relief by 101 mph-throwing Andres Munoz, Diego Castillo, Matt Brush, Paul Sewald, rookie Erik Swanson, Matt Festa and Matthew Boyd.

It ended — all of it — when Houston’s Jeremy Pena homered off Penn Murfee leading off the top of the 18th.

The most redemptive of the spotless relief work was by Sewald. One week earlier he allowed three hits and four runs trying to close out the Mariners’ wild-card series at Toronto. That outing spawned so much hate online that Sewald deleted his social-media accounts.

Saturday, he had Mariners fans co-opting the city’s “SEA-HAWKS!” chants. They replaced it with “SEA-WALD!” as he entered from the bullpen beyond left field to begin the 11th.

That was after Matt Brash escaped a two-on jam Castillo had created in the Houston ninth, then Brash’s perfect 10th. Sewald craftily threw sliders, precise fastballs — and two scoreless, hitless innings. He struck out two Astros in his perfect 11th.

The “SEA-WALD!” chants continued.

The only thing Sewald allowed was hitting Chas McCormick with a pitch leading off the 12th. Sewald then struck out the next two Astros and got Pena to ground into an inning-ending force out.

How personally redeeming was this Saturday for Sewald compared to last?

“We lost. I would rather pitch like I did in Toronto and pitch terribly and we won,” said the ultra-popular 32-year-old right-hander, who saved 20 games in 25 chances this regular season. “I’m glad that I did what I could to help the team.

“Personally doesn’t matter in October.”

After it ended, six hours and 22 minutes of frustration, thrills and sudden despair, Mariners general manager Jerry Dipoto walked around the quiet, proud clubhouse hugging every Mariner.

The architect with manager Scott Servais of the first Mariners playoff team in 21 years came to Rodriguez, the about-to-be-named American League rookie of the year.

The 21-year-old Rodriguez fllashed his stunning smile at his GM.

“We will be back,” Rodriguez said.

“We all know that.”