By Kirby Arnold
Herald Writer
SEATTLE – As teammate after teammate slumped around them this month – and one prominent player remained injured – two members of the Seattle Mariners’ old guard kept showing them how it’s done.
Ruben Sierra is 36 and Mark McLemore 37, but they continued to swing the bats with youthful authority Friday night, leading the Seattle Mariners to a 6-2 victory over the Baltimore Orioles.
McLemore hit a two-run homer in the fifth inning and Sierra followed with a three-run blast that powered the Mariners’ five-run surge that buried the Orioles and sent starting pitcher Freddy Garcia on a three-hit cruise to his fifth victory this season.
On a night when 39-year-old Edgar Martinez was transferred to the 60-day disabled list and the team called up 20-year-old outfielder Chris Snelling, Sierra and McLemore flexed some impressive muscle.
They’ve been doing it all year.
McLemore went 2-for-3 and extended his hitting streak to a career-high 12 games and Sierra’s homer pushed his streak to 10 games.
Together, they’re putting together the best hitting performance by anyone on this team not named Ichiro.
McLemore has hit .422 during the 12-game streak and is batting .315. Sierra, while batting just .288 in his 10-game streak, is second on the team with a .327 average.
“No numbers, please,” McLemore said. “I don’t think about it. I just want to win. If it doesn’t help the team, it doesn’t matter.”
McLemore and Sierra have helped the team at a time when others haven’t been able to.
Designated hitter Edgar Martinez has been out since April 12 with an injured left leg, and the team moved him to the 60-day DL after Friday’s game. He’ll be eligible to come off the DL on June 10.
Center fielder Mike Cameron entered Friday with an 0-for-16 streak, then went 1-for-4 with an infield single that raised his average to .238.
Third baseman Jeff Cirillo continued to perform well below his .311 career average, going 0-for-4 Friday to drop his average to .241.
The first three innings Friday against Orioles starter Scott Erickson looked a lot like the past two weeks for the Mariners’ offense. Not many baserunners and no timely hits.
Then John Olerud led off the bottom of the fourth inning with a single, moved to second when Desi Relaford walked and scored on Dan Wilson’s single, making it a 1-1 game.
In the fifth, the Mariners couldn’t miss.
Ichiro Suzuki singled and McLemore lined a 2-2 pitch into the right-field seats for his fifth homer of the season.
Bret Boone and Olerud followed with singles and Sierra crushed his sixth homer to right for a 6-1 Mariners lead.
Even the struggling Cameron got a hit, a high chopper to deep shortstop for an infield single that was his first hit in 20 at-bats.
“I have no idea what happened,” Orioles manager Mike Hargrove said of Erickson. “His slider and breaking ball just suddenly flattened out and balls were breaking right over the middle of the plate.”
Garcia gave up just three hits, two of which sailed out of the ballpark.
Tony Batista’s solo homer in the second inning and Melvin Mora’s leadoff shot in the sixth were the 11th and 12th homers Garcia has allowed this season, but they were the only truly good swings the Orioles got Friday.
Chris Singleton was the only other Oriole to tag Garcia, with a ground-rule double in the sixth.
Garcia escaped that inning, then worked a 1-2-3 seventh that ended his night with nine strikeouts.
Three of those strikeouts were against Orioles designated hitter Marty Cordova, whose rugged week continued in the ninth inning with a fourth whiff against reliever Ryan Franklin. Besides the golden sombrero (baseball terminology for striking out four times in a game), Cordova also wore the scars of a suntan salon mishap in which the side of his face was burned earlier this week.
The Mariners hit another impressive number Friday.
The paid crowd of 44,900 gave the Mariners a home season attendance of 1,037,203 in 25 games, the quickest they’ve reached 1 million in club history. The Mariners passed that mark in 26 games last year.
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