SEATTLE – Minutes after he watched the Anaheim Angels play a third straight game like they should go ahead and be measured for World Series rings, Bret Boone offered a reminder.
“If they play like that all year, good luck to everyone in the world,” said Boone, the Seattle Mariners’ second baseman. “But that’s tough to do over a long season.”
Oh yeah, the old long-season reference.
Besides pitcher Freddy Garcia’s impressive 2004 debut, that’s all the Mariners could hang their chins on Thursday, when eight innings of solid baseball unraveled into a third straight loss.
The Angels scored five runs in the ninth inning and beat the M’s 5-1 at Safeco Field.
The loss left the Mariners with their first 0-3 start since the 1994 season. They finished 14-games under .500 then (49-63 in a strike-shortened season), although nobody dares compare this start with that one.
“It’s not the end of the world, but it would have been a nice game to win, especially in the fashion we would have won it in considering the way they’ve been swinging the bats,” Mariners manager Bob Melvin said.
This loss wasn’t delivered by the Angels’ power, which generated six home runs and 20 runs in the previous two games. The Mariners were doomed Thursday by a few decisions that backfired and enough close plays that made them chalk it up to the breaks of the game, for lack of any better explanation.
Besides the back-breaking ninth, no inning was more frustrating than the first, when the Mariners hit two doubles and a single but didn’t score. The rally killer was third-base coach Dave Myers’ decision to wave Randy Winn around third base as he tried to score from second on a sharp single by Boone.
Angels left fielder Jose Guillen, with one of the strongest arms in baseball, made a perfect throw to catcher Josh Paul, who had the ball long before Winn reached the plate.
Melvin defended Myers’ decision.
“We were going to try to score some runs and put pressure on them early in the game,” Melvin said. “We had our speed coming around third base. We knew he has a great arm, but he basically threw the ball flat-footed. He made a perfect throw on the fly to get him.”
As if Guillen’s throw didn’t sting enough, Raul Ibanez followed with a ground-rule double that forced Boone to stop at third base. Edgar Martinez then grounded out to end the inning.
In the fourth, another big opportunity crumpled into a single run after the Mariners loaded the bases with one out and Rich Aurilia sizzled a line drive up the middle. Angels pitcher Kelvim Escobar deflected the ball with his glove, and second baseman Adam Kennedy fielded the carom and threw out Aurilia. One run scored but another was saved, and the Angels escaped when Escobar struck out M’s catcher Ben Davis, who fanned in all three at-bats.
Garcia took that run and made it stand, pitching seven inning and allowing just four hits and two walks. He ran into trouble only in the second inning, when Garret Anderson led off with a single and Troy Glaus doubled. He then struck out Guillen, got Tim Salmon on a popup and, after an intentional walk to Kennedy that loaded the bases, struck out Paul.
Garcia allowed two hits and a walk the rest of the game.
Unfortunately for the Mariners, it didn’t complete the picture.
Julio Mateo pitched a perfect eighth inning and the Mariners, still without closer Eddie Guardado as he deals with a stiff shoulder, thought they had their bullpen aligned to face the Angels in the ninth.
Didn’t happen.
Left-handed specialist Mike Myers got two strikes to left-handed-hitting Anderson, then tried to throw a slider low and away. Instead, it was up and over the plate, and Anderson slapped it to left field for a leadoff single.
Melvin turned to interim closer Shigetoshi Hasegawa, who gave up a first-pitch single by Glaus, a seeing-eye single to right field by Guillen, and a single just over Boone’s glove to drive home two runs for a 2-1 Angels lead.
That blow preceded another Mariners misstep, a balk called on Hasegawa when he tried a fake pickoff move to third base before throwing to first. Plate umpire Greg Gibson said Hasegawa did not step toward third – an opinion strongly disputed by Hasegawa and pitching coach Bryan Price – and Guillen was waved home.
Before Hasegawa got the third out, Darrin Erstad doubled home two more runs. It was the fourth time in the three-game series that the Angels scored four or more runs in an inning.
“We had a one-run cushion, which didn’t give us much margin for error, and they exploited every possible situation,” Price said. “We’ll play them another 17 times this year, and I don’t think we’ll see this as a habit.”
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