The remnants of an 8-4 loss to the Giants today were a lot uglier on the surface than what it means in the worldly view of what the Mariners are trying to accomplish.
Doug Fister wobbled through three innings, allowing six hits, two walks and four runs, although only one was earned. The Mariners are having Fister pitch out of the windup, and the result was several pitches up in the strike zone.
“There’s a lot of things I liked about that outing,” manager Don Wakamatsu said. “It wasn’t real pretty but there were a couple of broken bats in there. We’re working on some things and I’m encouraged.”
In other words, don’t count Fister out of the fifth starter competition, even though Jason Vargas has been by far the leader of that pack.
One who isn’t in the fifth-starter race — if he ever was — is left-hander Garrett Olson. He tossed another bad one today, allowing two hits, two walks and two runs while getting only one out in the fourth inning. He isn’t commanding his pitches and the resulting 21.60 ERA isn’t something that you just blame on playing in dry air and hard infields.
Speaking of hard infields, Peoria Stadium played havoc on Chone Figgins’ fielding percentage and Eric Byrnes’ chin.
Figgins made two errors in the eighth inning, one on a fairly slow bouncer that went between his legs and the other on a chopper to his left caromed off the heel of his glove on the short hop. Earlier in the game, shortstop Josh Wilson booted a similar grounder (leading to three unearned runs off Fister).
Wakamatsu defended his fielders, saying the infield became rock-hard in the dry, breezy conditions.
“When we had all that rain (last week), there were some plays he made that were unbelievable,” Wakamatsu said of Figgins. “And you’re looking at a guy like Josh Wilson at shortstop. He can flat play some shortstop, and you’ve seen some balls kick up on him. We’re going to try and get the field watered down a little bit, but the problem is that it dries out so fast with this wind out there.”
Byrnes can surely tell a story of the hard infield. He doubled to the left-center field gap in the fifth inning and, as he sped toward second base, attempted a head-first bellyflop into the bag. He flopped all right, hitting so hard that his face took the brunt of the impact.
Byrned lay on the ground a few seconds, looking like a bird that had just flown into a window, then sprang to his feet as Wakamatsu and trainer Rick Griffin jogged out to check on him.
“He might as well have gotten into a car wreck,” Wakamatsu said. “He hurt his chin, his nose and both elbows. Nothing serious, but it’s going to leave a mark tomorrow.
“He said, ‘How’s my nose look? Does it affect my looks?’ I said, ‘No, you were ugly before.’”
A couple of other highlights:
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