SEATTLE — Manager Eric Wedge said before Wednesday’s homestand finale against the Toronto Blue Jays that the younger-by-the-day Seattle Mariners will play well some days and make mistakes others.
But, Wedge added, they’ll play hard on every pitch of every game.
The Marine
rs lost 5-1 Wednesday night to the Jays at Safeco Field, but literally spilled more blood in the process.
Right fielder Casper Wells, who’d homered in each of his past four games, took a fastball to the nose against Blue Jays starter Brandon Morrow in the sixth inning. It wasn’t a direct hit, but Wells stumbled across the field before going down. X-rays showed nothing was broken.
“He’s day-to-day. He should be OK,” Wedge said. “It hit him right across the nose. We’re fortunate it wasn’t broken. Any time you get up there, it’s scary.”
There was a lot of “up there” the final two games of the series with several pitches that were close to batters and some that hit them.
Mariners starter Blake Beavan, who wasn’t sharp from the beginning, hit the Jays’ Edwin Encarnacion in the third inning with a chest-high breaking ball that spun but didn’t break.
In his previous at-bat, Encarnacion homered to lead off the second inning, one of three home runs by the Jays in the first four innings as they built a 5-0 lead against Beavan.
Morrow, the former Mariner who struck out five straight hitters from the first through third innings, sent Mariners rookie Kyle Seager flying with one near his chin in the fifth. He came up and in on Wells in the sixth, and that pitch got him in the nose.
Morrow, who struck out 12 in six innings, didn’t allow a baserunner until he walked Jack Wilson with two outs in the third inning. He lost his no-hitter when Mike Carp singled with two outs in the fourth. Carp has a 17-game hitting streak.
“Morrow was good. He had four pitches working and had a live fastball,” said Wedge, who also noted plate umpire Brian Runge’s generous strike zone that had hitters on both teams looking twice. “It (the strike zone) was jumping on us a little bit. Our guys were up there taking their hacks.”
The only hack that produce a run for the Mariners was Franklin Gutierrez’s RBI double in the sixth, scoring Ichiro Suzuki.
Morrow is 9-7 with a 4.41 earned run average and has settled well into a starting role with Toronto after being bounced between the rotation and the bullpen when he pitched with the Mariners.
“To think how far he’s come in less than two years, he’s doing consistent work, having consistent outings,” Jays manager John Farrell said. “He was just overpowering for six innings tonight.”
Their second-straight loss aside, the Mariners’ young relievers again performed well.
Rookie Dan Cortes pitched two perfect innings in his second straight solid relief appearance. Chance Ruffin, who began the day in Buffalo, N.Y., before becoming the player to be named later in the Mariners’ July 30 trade with the Tigers, pitched a 1-2-3 eighth.
“It was impressive to watch him throw,” Wedge said of Ruffin, the Tigers’ supplemental first-round draft pick last year. “He’s got a lot of action on the ball. He’s aggressive, comes right at guys.”
It also was a tense game with inside pitches that, intentional or not, made hitters notice and, with Wells’ injury, added to a growing list of ailing young Mariners.
Second baseman Dustin Ackley has been nursing a sore leg, Seager was hit in the back with a fastball the previous night, outfielder Trayvon Robinson banged his ribs into a railing while catching a pop foul and first baseman Justin Smoak remains on the disabled list with a broken nose after he was hit in the face by a ground ball Friday.
Ackley also took an elbow to the midsection in the ninth inning when Toronto’s Brett Lawrie slid hard into him after a force play at second base.
Read Kirby Arnold’s blog on the Mariners at www.heraldnet.com/marinersblog and follow his Twitter updates at @kirbyarnold.
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