It’s Canadian Bakin’ for the Mariners

Published 9:00 pm Sunday, May 13, 2001

By Larry LaRue

The News Tribune

TORONTO – Any month now, in a country near you, the Seattle Mariners are going to cool off.

But it wasn’t Canada, and it wasn’t Sunday – and with their 7-5 victory over the Blue Jays the Mariners swept their way to a fifth consecutive victory that pushed their best-in-baseball record to 28-9.

Cool off? Don’t mention it to Ichiro Suzuki, who needed all of one pitch in the first inning to extend his hitting streak to 19 consecutive games, doubling into right center field to set up Seattle’s first run.

“I don’t talk about slumps,” Ichiro said. “I don’t believe in them.”

Nor should he. On a day when he went three-for-three with a single, double and triple – pushing his batting average to .360 – he also continued another remarkable stretch of baseball.

In 37 games this season, Ichiro has hit safely in 35 of them.

And while no other Mariner can say the same, it seems no one on the roster has been all that far behind.

Veteran Jamie Moyer is 6-1 with Sunday’s victory, and closer Kazuhiro Sasaki closed out Toronto for his 17th save.

Second baseman Bret Boone isn’t exactly hot – 7-for-24 on this six-game trip – but he makes the most of his at-bats. On Sunday, he had an infield single and a two-run home run, giving him 34 RBI for the season and seven on the trip.

And Mark McLemore, who doesn’t play regularly, followed a three-hit game on Saturday with a two-hit, two-walk, two-RBI game in which he tossed in his seventh stolen base.

No, he hasn’t been caught yet.

Eventually, this all may change. As the summer heats up, the Mariners may cool down – but neither Boston nor Toronto could do the job this week.

“We just played six games against two good teams,” McLemore said. “If people are still surprised we’re winning, they are not watching.”

“What we haven’t done all year is beat ourselves,” Moyer said. “Tell you the truth, it’s fun watching us play – and I’m on the team. We do all the basic things wells, and we keep coming at you.”

Manager Lou Piniella didn’t have a lot of room to maneuver Sunday. Relievers Jeff Nelson and Arthur Rhodes were “untouchables” – relievers in need of a breather. On his bench, he had one player too sick to play, David Bell, one backup catcher (Dan Wilson), and outfielders Mike Cameron and Al Martin.

By game’s end, Cameron and Wilson were in the game.

And by game’s end, Piniella had gotten six innings from Moyer and then coaxed the most out of what bullpen he had available.

McLemore’s single and an error by third baseman Tony Batista produced a 7-5 lead in the top of the sixth and Piniella let Moyer work that inning. Once the seventh started, however, he went to long reliever Ryan Franklin.

And the heat kept coming.

Franklin pitched a scoreless inning., but after giving up a single in the eighth, Norm Charlton was brought in to face one hitter, left-handed slugger Carlos Delgado.

Delgado flied out.

Jose Paniagua trotted in, got the next two hitters and the Mariners were in the ninth inning.

Sasaki time.

The big right-hander notched save No. 17 – a full 43 games ahead of his pace of a year ago, when he saved a major league rookie record 37 games.

A year ago, when Seattle won a club-record 91 games, the team didn’t win No. 28 until June 6, and that victory left the Mariners 28-25, tied for first place in the American League West.

There have been faster starts, though never by a Seattle team. And there have been quicker explosions upon the major league scene than that of Ichiro, though no one with the Mariners is too concerned about who may have been better.

They’ll stick with what they have.

Thirty-seven games into his big-league career, the 27-year-old Ichiro leads the majors with 62 hits, and he’s scored 34 runs in 37 games.

“I’m his manager and he’s fun to watch,” Piniella admitted. “It must be as much fun for our fans. He’s a player, and I don’t say that easily. He can play.”

Ichiro’s hitting streak of 19 games matches that of Phil Bradley (1986) as the fourth longest in franchise history, five games behind Joey Cora’s team record, set in 1997.

“Nineteen is a long way from 24,” Ichiro said.

Someday, somewhere, that streak will be stopped. But it wasn’t Sunday, and it wasn’t in Canada.