MLB

Mariners live a tale of two seasons

This was July 5, so of course the Mariners were going to figure out a way to win.

“For a long time this year,” Eric Wedge said, “that’s what we did.”

That night, in front of a sparse gathering of friends and family and curiosity seekers inside Oakland-Alameda County Stadium. Felix Hernandez had thrown eight splendid innings of four-hit ball for Seattle and his bullpen had betrayed him, blowing a ninth-inning lead. But the Mariners were undeterred.

“We would scratch and claw a lot, and always fight back from tough spots, all year long,” said Wedge, the Seattle manager. “That’s who we are — who we were — as a club.”

BOX SCORE

The Mariners scored a couple of bounce-back runs in top of the 10th, closed out the Athletics in the bottom, won 4-2, evened their record at 43-43 on the season. They were only 2½ games behind the Angels and Rangers in the AL West, and across three-plus months had established themselves, along with the Pirates, as baseball’s feel-good story of the season.

“That’s the thing,” third baseman Adam Kennedy said. “The fans in Seattle were just starting to realize how good a story we were. There was some real excitement with the way we were playing. It had been such a terrific ride . . . ”

The A’s beat the Mariners, 2-0, the next night. No big deal.

In Anaheim, Calif., the next night, Jared Weaver threw a six-hitter at them, and where is the dishonor in that? Weaver’s been crushing teams all season.

The next night, the Mariners were up 3-2 on the Angels in the seventh inning. But the Angels’ Hank Conger hit a two-out home run in the seventh, and Mike Trumbo hit a homer leading off the ninth to win it 4-3, and . . . well, that’s about the time things started to blur a bit.

“We’re not playing bad,” catcher Mike Carp said. “We’re just not winning.”

After last night’s 10-3 thrashing at the hands of the Yankees, the Mariners have not won in exactly three weeks. Twenty-one days. This 16-game losing streak has been interrupted only by a three-day respite for the All-Star Game, and it has been every bit as ugly as you’d imagine: that 4-3 loss to the Angels was one of only two one-run losses during the entire streak. Seattle has been outscored 97-43 during the skid.

“When the pitching’s been there, the bats haven’t,” said old New York friend Dave Sims, who calls Mariners games on TV and has watched the surprise of early July transform into the scourge of late July. “And recently, the offense has been there but . . . ”

That’s the remarkable thing. The Mariners beat the Yankees twice in May behind their sparking 1-2 punch of Hernandez and rookie Michael Pineda. Having one ace is supposed to make extended losing streaks difficult; having two arms like that at the top of the rotation? If it doesn’t make you bulletproof, it’s supposed to make 16-game losing streaks something only other teams worry about.

But since July 5, Pinero is 0-2, has allowed 19 earned runs in 15 2/3 innings and seen his ERA rise from 2.58 to 3.64. And even Hernandez, borderline unhittable on his best nights, has been pushed around, surrendering 12 earned runs in 21 innings over three starts, going 0-2, seeing his ERA rise by almost a quarter.

The Mariners might have reached a portion of their schedule in which sustained overachievement was impossible. That loss, against the A’s, came against a lousy team. The past 15 have come against the Angels, Rangers, Blue Jays, Red Sox and Yankees, all but four on the road. And they get the Yankees two more days. In The Bronx.

“You kind of knew this was going to be a tough road,” Kennedy said.

Still. Sixteen straight? Look, bad teams are bad teams because they lose an awful lot of the time. The 1962 Mets didn’t lose 120 by accident: they had losing streaks of 17, 13, 11, and nine. The 2003 Tigers didn’t lose 119 by accident, either: but even they never had a streak longer than 11 (though there had skids of 10, 9 (twice), and 8 (twice).

The Mariners? For three months, they were the story of the sport.

They have been that for the past three weeks, too. Just the wrong kind of story.

michael.vaccaro@nypost.com