HEADLINE

Indians’ Carrasco looking for groove against Mariners

Field Level Media

April 17, 2019 at 7:22 am.

Carlos Carrasco hasn’t gotten off to a good start this season.

Literally and figuratively.

The right-hander, who went 18-6 and 17-10 over the past two seasons for the Cleveland Indians, has allowed six runs in two of his three starts this year.

After being knocked out in the first inning of an 8-1 loss in Kansas City last Friday, Carrasco is 1-2 with an unsightly 12.60 ERA.

Carrasco will look to get back on track Wednesday afternoon in Seattle, when he faces Mariners right-hander Erik Swanson (0-0, 9.00), who will be making his first major league start. Carrasco is 4-3 with a 4.10 ERA in eight career appearances against Seattle, including seven starts.

“It’s really hard, man, when you don’t have your stuff like the first game, now,” Carrasco told MLB.com. “I cannot do that, like go back and forth. You know, have one game, good game, bad game, good game, bad game. I cannot do that. … Nothing was there (Friday). I’m glad everything is good and I’m healthy, but I couldn’t find myself.”

Carrasco went just two-thirds of an inning in that outing. He faced nine Royals batters, giving up a single, triple, homer, walk, single, single, sacrifice fly, strikeout and double.

“To be honest with you, nothing was there,” Carrasco said. “My command, my velo(city), nothing was there.”

That was against a Kansas City team that was on a 10-game losing streak.

“I mean (catcher) Roberto (Perez) even mentioned, ‘I couldn’t get him to throw with conviction,’ ” Indians manager Terry Francona said. “Because when he does, the break on his slider’s great and it’s good. He’s got one of the better fastballs. Again, it’s not Carlos-like and it put us behind the eight ball.”

Carrasco’s fastball averaged 91.5 mph, down from 93.7 in his first two starts, but the 32-year-old insisted he’s healthy.

“To be honest, in the bullpen I thought he was going to have a great day,” Perez told MLB.com. “But once he got on the bump in the game it was a different Carlos. Like I said, he just didn’t look like Carlos. He lost it. … He’ll be back. We’re going to figure it out.”

Carrasco will face a Mariners team that returned home with a 13-2 record before losing the first five games of its six-game homestand, including a 4-2 defeat to the Indians on Tuesday night.

After scoring five or more runs in 15 of their first 16 games, the Mariners have totaled just nine runs in their past four losses.

“I don’t think anyone expected that we would score seven or eight runs per game,” Mariners manager Scott Servais said. “You’ve got to tighten up the defense and throw strikes out of the bullpen and make pitches to hold teams right there to give our offense a chance to get going, and we haven’t done it. We haven’t been able to do it here on this homestand.”

Jay Bruce went deep in the eighth inning Tuesday to give the Mariners home runs in each of their first 20 games to start this season, a major league record.