By Ryan Divish

The Seattle Times

ANAHEIM, Calif. — From a collective standpoint, the 2017 season has been a failure for the Seattle Mariners. That was driven home with another loss Friday night, a 6-5 defeat to the Angels in a game they should’ve won.

The Mariners are playing out a string of meaningless games and awaiting an offseason where they’ll watch the playoffs on television. They failed to meet their biggest preseason goal—making the postseason. Instead, they extended the longest streak without appearing in the playoffs by another year, dating to 2001.

But beyond the whole, there are accomplishments and performances that should be considered significant in the moment and beyond.

Perhaps no player embodies that more than catcher Mike Zunino, who continued his breakout season Friday night at Angels Stadium. Zunino smashed a two-run homer in the sixth inning for what should have been enough to secure a win for the Mariners.

Instead, the Mariners’ three best relievers combined to give up four runs in the bottom of the eighth inning, squandering a three-run lead.

Nick Vincent, who has struggled against the Angels all season, gave up two runs. Brought in with two outs to face lefty-swinging Kole Calhoun, lefty Marc Rzepczynski couldn’t do it and gave up a single off his foot. Closer Edwin Diaz couldn’t stop the bleeding, giving up a bloop double to right field that scored two runs and gave the Angels the lead for good.

Seattle fell to 77-83 for the season.

With the Mariners having taken a 3-2 lead the inning before on a Robinson Cano RBI single, Zunino came to the plate in the sixth inning with Kyle Seager on first base after a leadoff single.

Facing veteran right-hander Yusmeiro Petit, Zunino fell behind 0-2 on the first two pitches. In past years, a strikeout was almost a certainty. But while he still strikes out more than he’d like, it isn’t an inevitability now. Zunino crushed an 0-2 fastball over the wall in left-center to provide the requisite cushion for the Mariners bullpen to close out the win.

It was Zunino’s 25th homer of the season and it gave him 64 RBI in 124 games played. His eighth-inning double gave him 25 for the season as well. And it also pushed his batting average to .251. That Zunino would hit .251 for a season given his swing-and-miss issues early in his career is a remarkable accomplishment and speaks to his improvement.

It certainly wasn’t a given considering his struggles in his first four years at the big-league level. Last season, he spent most of it in Class AAA and then finished slumping at the big-league level after an initial hot stretch when he was called up. The five weeks of this season only provided more frustration. Zunino batted just .167 with a .486 on-base plus slugging percentage and 30 strikeouts in 24 games and was optioned to Class AAA Tacoma on May 5. But after a three-week stint with the Rainiers, a change in his stance, swing and pregame preparation, he has worked his way into becoming a consistent producer at the plate to go with his skills behind it.

Since being called up, Zunino is hitting .270 (85 for 315) with 20 doubles, 25 homers and 62 RBI.

Beyond the outburst is the belief that this is sustainable, which would be a massive benefit to the Mariners lineup that already has plenty of punch.

Seattle started off the fourth inning with back-to-back homers from Nelson Cruz and Kyle Seager off Angels starter Tyler Skaggs. It was homer No. 39 for Cruz. He has two games to reach the 40-homer plateau for the fourth straight season. For Seager, it was his 26th of the season.

Mariners starter Marco Gonzales added his name to a long list of Mariners pitchers to give up a home run to Mike Trout in his brilliant but young career. The solo shot in the first inning was Trout’s 200th homer of his career. But being an equal opportunity masher, Trout hit his 201st of career in the eighth inning of reliever Vincent. Of the 201 homers, 26 have come off 15 Mariners pitchers. Felix Hernandez has given up seven of them.

Vincent’s struggles against the Angels continued in the eighth inning. After Gonzales went just four innings, the trio of Ryan Garton, Emilio Pagan and James Pazos worked the next three innings. Vincent came in with a 5-3 lead, gave up the homer to Trout and a RBI single to C.J. Cron while getting just two outs.