It’s hard not to overreact when the Mariners are playing into fans’ fears

At times, you could hear the faint roar of the Monster Truck Show wafting over from Lumen Field on Saturday night. There would few wafting roars at T-Mobile Park as the game sped by at breakneck speed; just the disturbing sounds of silence that permeated the Mariners’ offense, until finally the Mariners found a way to mobilize their restless faithful in the eighth.

It took the arrival of Cleveland reliever James Karinchak, whom they had verbally harangued into a game-losing homer in the opener, to arouse the dormant fervor. This time with the game again on the line, Karinchak struck out Cal Raleigh and Julio Rodriguez, oblivious to the taunting pitch-clock countdowns from the crowd. This time, Karinchak was the Gravedigger, burying the Mariners’ last, best — and only — chance.

The Mariners fell quickly (two hours and four minutes) and quietly (a mere three hits), a 2-0 loss that was disproportionately alarming, as is the custom at this juncture.

It is the time of year when far too much meaning is derived from results, both good and bad. Call it Small Sample Size Theater or Overreaction Drama. And yet three games into the season, far too soon to draw conclusions but not too early to warrant apprehension, many of the nagging concerns over this heralded Mariners season are peaking out into the light of day.

A near-capacity crowd of 44,250, drawn by the Julio Rodriguez bobblehead giveaway, watched an absolutely tepid offensive performance — a (very) early trend. And that was after a disturbing start to the day for the Mariners when Robbie Ray was placed on the injured list with a flexor strain, an almost immediate validation of the lingering worry that last year’s run of good health from Seattle’s starters was an aberration.

So now the pitching depth, billed as a strength, will be tested with Chris Flexen moving into the rotation. And the Mariners have done nothing yet to quell the notion that they didn’t do enough in the offseason to boost their offense.

It’s beyond absurd to make any definitive statements to that regard after three games. But it doesn’t help that the two big additions to the lineup, Teoscar Hernandez and Kolten Wong, are a combined 1 for -21. The team batting average is .183. Even in their lone win, the Mariners were shut out for eight of the nine innings; if not for Ty France’s homer off the rattled Karinchak, that game might still be going on.

Scott Servais has been around long enough to know that things can turn around on a dime when at-bats are so few that averages can rise by a hundred points with one good game. But he acknowledged the hitters might be pressing a bit, yearning for that breakout moment.

“There were some pitches they typically get in play hard, and they aren’t doing that,’’ he said. “But the biggest thing we talk about all the time is swing at the right pitches. You’ve got to control the strike zone and really understand what we’re trying to do.

“Each guy’s a little bit different. But as long as we swing at the right pitches, we’ll be fine. It’s when you get out of that, and you start chasing the hits, that you get into trouble. But we have a long ways to go. That’s the way offense goes in this league. It goes up, it goes down, you get hot, you cool off, you run into some tough pitching. We’ve got to come back at them tomorrow.”

The combination of the pitch clock, the absence of much offense to provide stressful moments, and Cleveland starter Aaron Civale locked into a rhythm, led to another torrid-paced game — just two hours and four minutes. One by-product of the newly implemented clock is that it’s hard to get a pitcher out of a groove like Civale was in; he needed just 80 pitches to go seven scoreless innings.

Mariners’ starter Logan Gilbert, who was outstanding in his own right — his only mistake over six innings was knocked into the bleachers by Josh Naylor — lamented the loss of Ray.

“Yeah, I feel for him,’’ he said. “It’s tough, especially at this point in the season. Robbie’s the best guy out there. Honestly, he’s helped me a ton. I look up to him a lot. So just hoping, praying for quick recovery and all that stuff. But I know the team is going to find a way to pull together and we’ll have him back later in the year when the games really matter.”

To make them truly matter later, of course, it would help not to spin into the kind of poor start that has plagued the Mariners the past two seasons. Two years ago, when they missed a playoff berth on the final day, they were still under .500 on June 17. Last year, they were 21-29 on June 1 and 29-39 on June 19 before winning 22 of their next 25 games. It’s unwise, however, to rely upon a 14-game win streak every year.

Saturday’s game was set up for Rodriguez to be the hero. That would have been the storybook script, anyway. His bobblehead was already drawing a $100 asking price on eBay — not that many of the 20,000 who got one of the coveted souvenirs were going to let it out of their grasp. Rodriguez singled his first two times up, but grounded into a double play in the sixth, and went down swinging in the eighth with Karinchak in a monster jam: two aboard and Julio representing the go-ahead run.

A home run would have given the Mariners a lead and prompted a roar that no doubt would have been heard at Lumen over the trucks. But there was no joy at T-Mobile; the mighty Julio struck out.

All it will take is one loud game to quell this line of inquiry into the Mariners. But right now, the volume of their offensive silence is rising.