By Kirby Arnold
Herald Writer
SEATTLE – What’s best for Jeff Cirillo?
Another chance to show he’s not this bad a baserunner? A seat on the bench to clear his head? A padded room?
All those seemed to be possibilities on Saturday after the Seattle Mariners’ struggling third baseman ran into yet another out on the bases, this time at the plate as he tried to score the tying run in the eighth inning against the Baltimore Orioles.
Cirillo was tagged out, the Orioles held on for a 3-2 victory, and the postgame talk centered once again on the fundamentals of running the bases.
“Honestly, I’m a great baserunner,” Cirillo said.
Some may beg to differ after Saturday’s play ended a tumultuous week for Cirillo, who was picked off first base three days earlier against the Devil Rays and was benched for one game.
Back in the lineup for a second straight day, Cirillo stood on third base with one out, the bases loaded, Bret Boone at the plate and the Mariners trailing by a run in the eighth.
Boone popped a fly to shallow right field, where Jay Gibbons made a running catch.
Mariners third-base coach Dave Myers said he was shocked at what he saw next.
“I figured he’d take a couple of steps to draw the throw,” Myers said. “The next thing I know, he’s going all the way to the plate.”
Trying to tag up and make something positive happen in a season that has seen little but negative results, Cirillo arrived at the plate and into the tag of catcher Geronimo Gil.
“Gibbons has an average arm,” Myers said. “He caught it face-high with his momentum going toward home plate. That wouldn’t be a situation I’d even try on a bad arm.”
Myers said he told Cirillo to “tag and stay.”
“I didn’t hear that,” Cirillo said. “I should have listened to him better.”
On the previous play, when Mike Cameron’s bouncer glanced off shortstop Melvin Mora’s glove for a run-scoring error, it was smart running by Cirillo that helped make it happen. Cirillo, running from second, slowed just enough to screen Mora, who said he didn’t see the ball until the last bounce.
All anyone remembers, however, is the play at the plate, which turned out like so many other nightmarish moments in Cirillo’s first eight weeks as a Mariner.
After going 0-for-2 Saturday, Cirillo is batting .237 in a rugged start in which he has tried to make his impact in other ways.
“I haven’t given up hope,” he said. “I still think I can turn this around. I still get here early. I still work just as hard.
“When I was traded here, I saw it as nothing but positive. You never reflect on when it doesn’t go so well. Sometimes you just try to do too well and stuff gets magnified.”
Manager Lou Piniella, clearly mystified by Cirillo’s misfortune, isn’t sure what to do about it.
“I’m in the dugout and that’s it,” Piniella said of the play at the plate, pausing before he crafted his opinion. “There’s a difference between aggressive and smart aggressive.”
Wise or not, the play helped the Orioles hold on and beat Mariners rookie pitcher Rafael Soriano, whose first-inning wildness and a couple of bad pitches in the sixth made the difference.
The 22-year-old Soriano gave up a leadoff double to Mora and three straight one-out walks to give Baltimore a 1-0 lead in the first. Soriano then hit a rhythm that shut down the Orioles for four more innings.
In the sixth, though, Chris Singleton hit a one-out double and Jeff Conine crushed a belly-high fastball into the left-field seats for a two-run homer that made the difference.
Orioles starter Travis Driskill, a 30-year-old also making his first career start in the majors, silenced the Mariners until Boone clubbed his seventh home run over the center field fence in the seventh.
That ended Driskill’s night, but the Mariners quickly got relievers Rick Bauer and Buddy Groom in trouble in the eighth when they loaded the bases and scored a run that made it 3-2.
Then came Cirillo chance to make an impact and, no matter how hard he tried, again found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“Seattle has not seen the real Jeff Cirillo yet,” he said. “And I don’t know where he is.”
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