SEATTLE – The first weekend of June doesn’t usually represent the dog days of a baseball season, but given what the Seattle Mariners have experienced the past three weeks, it already seems like a never-ending grind.
Playing their 20th game in 20 days, the Mariners have arrived at that point where it’s all about worrying about the next game and winning the series.
After Sunday’s 11-6 victory over the Texas Rangers at Safeco Field, the Mariners are doing just that.
Left-hander Ryan Feierabend, a 21-year-old with the poise of a veteran, held the Rangers to seven hits in 71/3 innings to record his first major league victory. And the offense produced another big display, scoring at least 10 runs for the fourth time in the past 11 games, and finishing the four-game series against Texas with 33 runs.
Through the fatigue of what will be a stretch of 23 straight games before the Mariners get a day off Thursday, they’ve played through injuries that have landed two starting pitchers (Jeff Weaver and Horacio Ramirez) and two relievers (Chris Reitsma and Sean White) on the disabled list and settled into a pattern of solid baseball that is building confidence.
They have won nine of their past 13 games, including three of the four against the Rangers, and have won three of their past four series. The Mariners are 11-9 since their last day off.
“What we’re all about is winning series,” said bench coach John McLaren, who ran the team while manager Mike Hargrove attended his daughter’s high school graduation over the weekend in Cleveland. “To win three out of four from a team in our division is huge.”
A 2-7 record against the first-place Angels is all that has kept the Mariners from the top of the American League West Division. They’re 51/2 games out.
“We know the Angels are playing well; we read the paper every day and see the scoreboard,” McLaren said. “But we know we’re going to streak at some point and hopefully they’ll cool off, and we’ll catch them.”
The key to the Mariners’ success has been their offense.
Even with a tweaked lineup that was missing Adrian Beltre (sprained thumb), Kenji Johjima (day off) and Jose Vidro (day off), the Mariners again pounded Texas pitching. And they did it in a second straight hitless game by Ichiro Suzuki, who went 0-for-3 one day after his 25-game hitting streak was snapped.
Jose Lopez went 4-for-5 and drove in three-runs with a bases-clearing double off the top of the left-field wall in the fourth inning that needed to carry only a few more inches to be a grand slam. That hit ignited a five-run inning that allowed the Mariners to come back from a 4-1 deficit.
Jose Guillen had three hits and drove in three runs, including two in the Mariners’ four-run sixth inning, and Yuniesky Betancourt extended his hitting streak to 15 games with two doubles.
Betancourt also stole third base in the sixth and scored when catcher Jamie Burke dropped a squeeze bunt, somehow getting his bat on a pitch that was headed toward his chin. Burke tumbled out of the batter’s box after he bunted the ball.
“I’ll probably be on the bloopers,” Burke said. “But I’m just glad I got it down.”
Amid all the hitting, the hero of the day was Feierabend.
Knowing he needed to pitch deep into the game in order to preserve a badly overworked bullpen, Feierabend pitched a career-high 71/3 innings and kept the Rangers under his control most of the way.
His only mistakes were a couple of home-run pitches he served to Mark Teixeira in the second inning to tie the score 1-1 and to Victor Diaz in the fourth, when his three-run blast to left field gave Texas a 4-1 lead.
“Other than that, I felt like I threw a pretty good game,” Feierabend said.
Slightly.
“He’s got ice in his veins,” McLaren said. “He made a bad pitch and gave up a homer and got behind. Sometimes young kids get frustrated and start over-throwing and start nibbling. But he looked like a seasoned pro out there. He stuck with the game plan and the offense came back.”
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