SEATTLE—Seattle Mariners manager Scott Servais has been around baseball too long to get too low or too high during a 162-game season.

And because of that, he is usually loath to make a big deal about any one game, win or lose. But after losing five in a row and with his team on the verge of being swept by the Texas Rangers and losing all hope in the wild-card race, Servais made a pronouncement hours before the game Thursday.

“This is a big game,” he said. “I said it, this is a big game.”

But as much as the manager might have wanted to will his team to a victory, it wasn’t going to be easy, not with lefty Cole Hamels on the mound. The Rangers lefty got a couple of runs to work with in the first inning, and that was more than he needed as Texas beat the Mariners 4-2.

In a way, it was a big game for Robinson Cano, who hit his 300th career home run in the ninth inning for Seattle.

Still, the Mariners fell to 74-79 and are five games behind Minnesota in the race for the AL’s second wild-card spot.

Hamels (11-4) allowed three hits, including Nelson Cruz’s 35th homer, and one run in eight innings. He walked two and struck out seven.

The Mariners’ James Paxton, making his second start since coming off the disabled list, loaded the bases just eight pitches into the game. But with one out, he struck out Joey Gallo and it looked like he would get out of the inning when Carlos Gomez hit a hard ground ball directly to third baseman Kyle Seager.

Seager went to his knees, but the ball bounced off his glove into left field. Two runs scored on what was very generously ruled a double and you could sense the crowd of 14,849 was thinking here we go again.

On another deflating night overall, the Mariners could at least feel good about the progress made by Paxton, who fell to 12-5. After lasting only 11/3 innings in his first start off the DL (allowing three runs and six base runners), he made it through 32/3 innings and 73 pitches Thursday.

Paxton, who was on a 75-pitch limit after being on a 50-pitch limit in his previous start, allowed two runs on four hits and two walks.

Not that Texas needed many more runs after the first inning, the way Hamels was pitching, but former Adrian Beltre hit a long home run to lead off the sixth inning, and another former Mariner, Shin-Soo Choo, hit a homer to right center in the seventh.

For current Mariners, there was little to be cheery about, other than Cruz’s opposite-field blast to right.