Kansas City, Mo. ? The Seattle Mariners were relieved to see Zack Greinke leave after seven scoreless innings.

Kansas City’s bullpen, however, offered the Royals no relief.

Greinke exited after 119 pitches and leading 2-0, but the Mariners batted around in a three-run eighth to beat the Royals, 3-2, on Tuesday night.

“Greinke was tough,” Mariners manager Don Wakamatsu said. “Getting him out of there maybe before he was ready in a sense just because of pitch counts, allows us to get to their bullpen.”

Relievers Jose Rupe (0-1), Robinson Tejeda and Bruce Chen blew it for Greinke and the Royals. The bullpen is 3-6 and has seven blown saves in 13 opportunities and has the highest earned-run average in the American League at 6.61

“We’re throwing away games that we should be winning and probably will end up biting us by the end of the year if we don’t stop making mistakes in key situations,” Greinke said. “I feel like we’ve played better than every team so far. We hit better and pitch better, but we’ll have one bad inning or one situation where we’ll ruin a good opportunity and playing good, but not getting the job done. It’s cost us.”