MARINERS NOTES: Quietly nasty

Sean White may seem out of place amid the cast of characters that comprises the Mariners' bullpen. He's quiet, unemotional and soft-spoken.

"He's like those guys who play poker," fellow reliever David Aardsma said. "The quiet and reserved ones are the guys you've got to watch out for. You never know what they've got."

White has as 2.50 earned run average in 13 appearances and hasn't allowed a hit, much less a run, in his past four outings. He pitched 12/3 innings in Sunday's victory over the Red Sox, getting a double-play grounder to stop the Sox in the sixth inning before pitching a scoreless seventh.

Despite the late-inning heroics of Aardsma and Mark Lowe, White's emergence has been important to a bullpen that lost closer Brandon Morrow and setup man Shawn Kelley to injuries in the past month.

"After Kelley went down, we needed somebody to step up, and he has stepped up big," Aardsma said.

It has taken time and hard work for White to reach this point. He pitched 15 games for the Mariners in 2007 before biceps tendinitis felled him, and he didn't reach the big leagues again until he was called up from Class AAA Tacoma on April 16. He has clearly been a different pitcher than what he was two years ago.

"I've really worked on mechanics quite a bit and it has helped a lot with location," he said. "I just feel like I've got it working now. I feel really good with all my pitches and I feel like I can use them in a lot of different counts.

"I've spent a lot of time trying to get myself into a position where I can really help this ballclub. It's a combination of things that are working for me -- confidence, being aggressive and having a good group of guys around me."

And yes, the laid-back White mixes well with some fairly flamboyant personalities in the pen.

"I'd describe him as quiet, reserved and very focused," Aardsma said. "But he's definitely a cog in that circus we have out there. He's having fun and he brings a sense of humor to it all, which you have to have in the bullpen. But when it comes time to work, he's fearless. He creates a good angle on the ball, he throws hard and he has a dirty, dirty sinker. He's not intimidated by big situations and he's coming right after guys. He's making the hitters react to him, and that's when you have a lot of success."

He swings, he misses, he sits

Third baseman Adrian Beltre didn't start Monday for the first time this season, and there was no better time for a break. Beltre was hitless in 11 at-bats in the first three games of the homestand to drop his average to .211. He was such a mess at the plate, he struck out swinging twice Sunday on balls well out of the strike zone.

The worse things have gotten for Beltre lately, the harder he seemed to swing. The Mariners want Beltre to avoid trying to use every muscle in his body to swing, and it hasn't been an easy adjustment.

"No one cares about this club or works harder than him and the last couple of days I think it is evident by the way he's going about his at-bats," Wakamatsu said. "He can be so active with his body that he falls across the plate."

Ronny Cedeno started at third base Monday and Wladimir Balentien moved up to fourth in the lineup. Wakamatsu wouldn't say if Beltre would bat fourth when he returns to the lineup tonight.

Of note

Wakamatsu said reliever Shawn Kelley (strained oblique) is ahead of schedule and could be back in about a month, which would be "two or three weeks ahead of what we thought before." … Starting pitcher Ryan Rowland-Smith (triceps tendinitis) was to pitch three innings at extended spring training today in Arizona and join the Class AAA Tacoma Rainiers on a rehab assignment Saturday. Barring setback, Rowland-Smith may return to the Mariners by June 1. … Starter Carlos Silva (right shoulder inflammation) had a magnetic resonance imaging exam Monday, but results weren't available.

Kirby Arnold, The Herald