SEATTLE — How not to score, Exhibit A: Lead off with a single but get picked off first base. Then watch the next two hitters each get a hit before a strikeout and popup.
How not to score, Exhibit B: Lead off with a double but never leave the bag because of a botched bunt attempt and two fly outs.
Together, those comprised another chapter Saturday night in the Seattle Mariners’ growing book of how not to win. By the time the Mariners did produce a run, it was too late in what became a 2-1 loss to the San Diego Padres at Safeco Field.
One day after the Mariners couldn’t help but hit balls to every gap, down each line and over the fence when they scored 15 runs, their inability to execute the basic principle of moving a runner cost them.
“It’s little things that cost you ballgames,” manager Don Wakamatsu said.
The price was more than just their 12th one-run loss this season.
The Mariners whiffed on a chance to trim a game off the gap in the American League West between them and the first-place Texas Rangers. The Rangers also lost but maintained their 81/2-game lead over the last-place Mariners.
The M’s also added to their string of wasted outings by their starting pitchers, this time in Ian Snell’s return to the rotation. After a three-week stint in the bullpen, Snell pitched aggressively in his five innings, holding the Padres to five hits, including Matt Stairs’ solo home run in the fourth inning.
“We pitched well enough to win this ballgame,” Wakamatsu said. “I liked his fastball; he had good life to it. He attacked the hitters. It’s exactly what he’d been doing out of the bullpen. I was impressed with his outing.”
The offense? Not so much.
Unlike Friday when they hit three home runs — two by Mike Sweeney — the Mariners showed no such muscle this time. Or an ability to convert scoring opportunities.
Sweeney drove home the only run with a two-out single in the sixth inning, and his one-out double in the ninth made for a 2-for-4 game and a late flicker of hope against Padres closer Heath Bell. Jose Lopez followed that hit with an infield single to put runners on first and third with less than two outs.
But, like the episodes early in the game, nobody moved any farther.
Milton Bradley worked a 3-0 count and seemed to have drawn ball four on a down-and-outside pitch. Plate umpire Jim Reynolds called it a strike.
Bradley swung through the next two pitches to strike out, and Casey Kotchman ended the game and a brutal 0-for-4 night at the plate with a ground out to shortstop. Kotchman is batting .194.
“It comes back down to situational hitting, or timely hitting,” Wakamatsu said.
Opportunity arose as early as the first inning, when Ichiro Suzuki led off with an infield single against Padres left-hander Clayton Richard. With Chone Figgins batting, Richard picked Suzuki off first base.
Figgins reached on an infield hit himself and sped to third when Franklin Gutierrez grounded a single to center field. However, Sweeney struck out and Lopez hit a pop foul to end the inning.
Josh Wilson hit a leadoff double in the third and the Mariners, who on Thursday bunted twice early in the game to score a run, failed to move him despite trying.
Suzuki, who entered the game leading the league with 60 hits but had a .247 average against left-handers, tried to push a bunt to the third-base side but popped it up.
“He was bunting for a base hit,” Wakamatsu said. “He’s facing 94 and 95 (mph) going away from him, and he thought that was the best opportunity, to bunt for a hit.”
Figgins followed with a fly to left field that likely would have scored Wilson had he been able to advance to third, and the inning ended when Gutierrez flied out.
Stairs gave the Padres a 1-0 lead with his first home run of the season in the fourth inning, and the Padres made it 2-0 in the sixth with well-executed situational hitting against reliever Kanekoa Texeira. Chase Headley doubled, advanced to third on Stairs’ ground out to the right side and scored on a wild pitch by Texeira.
Wakamatsu didn’t hesitate to praise Richard, who held the Mariners to seven hits and didn’t walk anyone in seven innings. But …
“He pitched a great game and he had great stuff,” Wakamatsu said. “But you look at the first and third innings when we didn’t manufacture a run. That maybe changes the pitch count and changes the situation.”
And possibly the outcome.
Read Kirby Arnold’s blog on the Mariners at www.heraldnet.com/marinersblog
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