THE CHEAP SEATS with STEVE CAMERON: M's had a chance to put the hated Astros away

The Mariners forgot to bring a wooden stake.

Or a silver cross.

Or a string of garlic.

Overlooking those obvious items left them unarmed Thursday against the Astros, who remain “undead,” the vampires of major league baseball.

The price was a 4-0 defeat that could mean more than we know. 

Centuries from now, there may be folklore tales about this baseball team that simply would not die.

The Astros have returned home to nap in Romania, or Transylvania, or some other spooky spot in eastern Europe where they sleep in coffins.

They are alive, but shouldn’t be.

Consider: The Mariners won the first three games of this midweek series in every soul-crushing way possible.

Jose Altuve and his pals almost got beheaded.

Vampires or not, the Astros were 6 1/2 games out of first place by Wednesday night, and they were DEAD, surely.

Think about it. 

The Mariners won on Monday by scoring three runs in the first inning, and hung on without anything even resembling another rally.

On Tuesday, Houston led 2-1 in the eighth and watched as the Mariners (in the words of Scott Servais) “brought in some chaos,” scored three crazy runs and won 4-2.

Then on Wednesday, the teams went into the 10th at 1-1, and Seattle got a lights-out, winning performance by reliever Mike Baumann in the final inning.

Yes, that would be the same Mike Baumann who was pitching for Baltimore a week earlier.

THE WEEK had to finish off the Astros.

All of it.

Everything.

Wasn’t that enough to prove that MLB’s unloved cheaters could not possibly rise up for another pennant run?

It surely was the end, right?

RIGHT?

The ‘Stros were staring into the grave.

But then, of course, they found another life.

They just refused to lie there and let it all be over.

Out of the ground came someone named Spencer Arrighetti, a previously obscure sixth-round draft choice, to pitch six scoreless innings.

He basically paralyzed the Mariners by mixing a lively fastball with an assortment of spinning stuff.

The M’s managed just two hits and struck out the usual eight times over those six sleepy innings against Arrighetti.

This was a guy making his ninth major league start, and he took the ball on Thursday with an ERA of 6.93, 20 walks in 37 2/3 innings, an unsightly WHIP of 1.779 and a negative WAR of minus 0.6.

The Mariners, meanwhile, threw one of their gang of aces, Logan Gilbert, out to sweep the Astros and put them in a goodbye-forever hole of 7 1/2 games behind.

Except.

These are the live-for-eternity Astros, so naturally Gilbert hung a rolling slider to Alex Bregman, whose drive to left skimmed the top of the fence and went over.

That made it 2-0, and Houston’s final two runs came from another household name, catcher Victor Caratini.

Caratini whacked a homer to deep right-center and drove in a run with a ground ball — all to prove and he and Arrighetti were more than names on the menu at Olive Garden.

SOMETIME, maybe in September, the Mariners could regret letting this Thursday snooze get away.

Worse than halting their modest four-game win streak, perhaps more important than keeping them from rising higher than four games over .500, what the M’s critically FAILED to do was drive a stake through Houston’s dark heart.

So, the undead Astros remain alive in the AL West race.

A couple of their injured pitchers are getting well and prepared to begin rehabbing assignments.

Honestly, they don’t look like a team that can rise up and trample everyone before it.

Still, these are the Astros, and they’ve seemed ready for hospice care in the past.

Have we forgotten the wrenching pain of the 2022 playoffs?

The ninth-inning, three-run homer by Yordan Alvarez?

You know, the one that sent Robbie Ray straight into Tommy John surgery?

Anyone remember the 18th-inning homer by Jeremy Pena?

Please, let’s not EVER be silly and write off these characters.

The Mariners wandered around on Thursday as though a coroner had pronounced the Astros dead the previous evening.

Seattle’s heroes all looked like they wanted to get home and grill some streaks with the neighbors.

Wash down a few cold ones and talk about a decent week of baseball.

Ah, but in all the relaxation, no one had thought about the penalty that comes with doing just half a job on driving that stake through Houston’s heart.

Vampires don’t just roll over and die naturally.

It doesn’t work that way.

Especially with the Astros.

Hey, somebody go yank open the casket and throw in a decade’s worth of garlic.

Yep, right now.

Email: scameron@cdapress.com

Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns appear in The Press four times each week, normally Tuesday through Friday unless, you know, stuff happens.

Steve suggests you take his opinions in the spirit of a Jimmy Buffett song: “Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On.”