By Kirby Arnold
Herald Writer
PEORIA, Ariz. – Nothing irks Lou Piniella like losing a baseball game, but what grinds his gut this time of year are the ways the losses occur.
Piniella was still talking Thursday about the previous day’s game against Anaheim, when one ill-advised pitch made the difference in a 5-3 loss.
“People don’t realize there’s such a fine line between winning and losing at the major league level,” Piniella said.
It was catcher Ben Davis who crossed to the wrong side of that line.
He called for a changeup in the seventh inning with the score was tied 3-3, runners on second and third and one out.
Wrong call.
“It’s part of the catcher’s responsibility to call the right pitches,” Piniella said. “We’ve got the infield playing in with runners at second and third, two strikes on the hitter and you’re looking for a ground ball. You want to throw something he’s going to hit on the ground. You don’t throw a changeup.”
The Angels’ Scott Spiezio showed why. He slapped the changeup from pitcher Brian Falkenborg up the middle for a run-scoring single that broke the tie.
After the inning, Piniella talked with his 24-year-old catcher.
“I asked him, ‘What was the thought process? What are we trying to accomplish?’” Piniella said. “Whether it’s a young pitcher or a young catcher, the thought process has to be right.
“These are things I really harp on. Errors don’t bother me because anybody can make an error, and the loss didn’t really bother me. It’s how we lost.”
Piniella has little patience for guys who play the game without thinking.
“They don’t tick me off,” he said. “They just don’t play.”
The game Piniella manages is vastly different from what the average fan sees. It’s a game in which pitch selection and location are tied directly to how the defense is aligned.
Those factors depend on the situation. Need a double-play grounder? Then don’t throw a changeup.
“Those are the intricacies of the game that people don’t understand,” Piniella said. “You see the base hit and the final outcome of it, but why did that base hit happen and why that outcome? That’s what I’m more interested in.
“If you stick to the basics of baseball and have a good team, you’ll win games. But you can have a good pitching staff and if they don’t make the right pitches, that staff becomes very mediocre. There’s a reason some teams win close ballgames and some teams lose close ballgames.”
Wilson leads victory: Catcher Dan Wilson had three hits and raised his batting average to .500 in the Mariners’ 5-2 victory over the Cubs on Thursday at Mesa.
“If I can keep this up the whole year, I’ll be in good shape,” said Wilson, who went 3-for-4 with a double and scored once. “It’s nice just to be seeing the ball well now. It’s been finding some holes.”
Ruben Sierra hit the Mariners’ first home run of the Cactus League season, a solo shot in the fifth inning. It was his second hit this spring.
“It felt good,” said Sierra, who has been slowed with a sore hamstring. “The more at-bats I get, the better my timing and everything are going to be. I feel good.”
Third baseman Jeff Cirillo’s slow start continued with an 0-for-3 day that dropped his average to .222.
Left-hander Jamie Moyer, making his second start, struck out two and gave up four hits and a run in four innings.
“I felt great but I could have thrown better,” Moyer said. “I struggled finding the plate. But you’re going to have days like that during the season, too. I pitched my way into jams and out of jams.”
In search of swings: Because he doesn’t play in National League games that don’t use the designated hitter, Edgar Martinez must do some careful scheduling to get enough at-bats to fine-tune his swing.
It’s even more of a challenge now, when Martinez will play in only two of the Mariners’ next six games. He’ll play today against Oakland and Monday against the White Sox, but stay behind for extra batting practice when there’s no DH.
“I would like to be getting at-bats now, but that’s just the way it is,” said Martinez, who is 2-for-13 (.154) this spring. “I’m not concerned about it. If we played a lot of National League games the last two weeks of camp, then I would be concerned.”
The solution has been for Martinez to join the minor leaguers, sometimes jumping from field to field during simultaneous games at the Mariners’ training complex and getting nearly 20 at-bats in an afternoon.
The minor league games won’t start until March 17.
“I hope when the minor league games start I’ll be getting a lot of at-bats there,” Martinez said. “That’s what makes up for all the at-bats I lose.”
Here come the kids: For the first time this year, nearly every player in the Mariners organization was in Peoria. Minor league pitchers and catchers, who held their first workouts earlier this week, were joined Thursday by position players.
There are two notable absentees, however.
Pitcher Rafael Soriano, who was supposed to join the big-league camp, has experienced visa problems in his native Dominican Republic but is expected to be in Peoria today. Pitcher Shin-Soo Choo of Korea also is absent because of similar problems.
Today in camp: Mariners vs. Giants at Scottsdale, 12:05 p.m. (PST) on KIRO radio (710 AM). Right-hander Paul Abbott will start for the Mariners against right-hander Livan Hernandez. Right-handers Ken Cloude, Greg Wooten and Justin Kaye also will pitch for the Mariners.
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