Gonzales turns in scoreless outing, Mariners down D-backs

By Ryan Divish / The Seattle Times

Mariners 6, Diamondbacks 3 at Salt River Field

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Starter Marco Gonzales worked 3.2 scoreless innings in his second start of the spring. He gave up three hits, issued two walks and struck out three batters.

With his fastball command spotty early in the outing, Gonzales focused on his variety of breaking pitches to help him get outs. In the third, he appeared to have worked an easy 1-2-3 inning. However, shortstop Mason McCoy bounced a throw that first baseman Mike Ford couldn’t handle. It should have been the third out of the inning. Christian Walker followed with a single to put runners on first and second. But Gonzales calmly struck out veteran hitter Evan Longoria on three pitches to end the inning.

The Mariners grabbed a 1-0 lead in the second on McCoy’s RBI single. They tacked on three more runs in the fourth. Ford hit a two-run homer to right field and Julio Rodriguez later added a laser of an RBI single to left-center.

First baseman Evan White was scratched from the original starting lineup and replaced by Ford. White did the pregame workout but felt some overall soreness in his core area.

“Nothing to be totally alarmed about,” manager Scott Servais said. “We talked about it early in camp. The goal with Evan is to be able to be ready to go on April 1 or March 30 or whenever. And if he did have some days where he came in and just didn’t feel 100%, we would talk about it, give him another day and get him back out there. No issues there. We just decided to pull him back today. He will probably be in there tomorrow or the next day. It’s nothing to worry about.”

Player of the game

Hitless in his first eight at-bats with four strikeouts over his first three games, Tom Murphy found plenty of results against Arizona. Murphy led off the second inning with an infield single on a slow roller to third and later scored on McCoy’s RBI single. In the fourth inning, Murphy, again leading off, legged out a single on a ground ball up the middle. He eventually scored on Ford’s two-run homer. There was no sprinting to first in Murphy’s third at-bat. He launched a moon ball on to the outfield berm for a solo homer. The towering fly had an exit velocity of 105 mph and traveled 376 feet.

“It’s nice to go out there and feel like you accomplished something again after a year without baseball,” Murphy said.

Quotable

“He needs to get his fastball command going, and he was going to focus on that today. I thought it did get better after a little bit of a rocky start early on. They did barrel some balls up against him. But having the right guys in the right spot helps and allowed him to get deeper in the game.” — Servais on Gonzales.

On tap

The Mariners return to Peoria Stadium on Saturday to host the Colorado Rockies. Right-hander George Kirby will make his first start of the spring and is expected to throw around two innings. Also scheduled to pitch for Seattle are right-handers Easton McGee, Trevor Gott, Penn Murfee and Riley O’Brien and lefty Blake Weiman. The Rockies will start lefty Kyle Freeland. First pitch is set for 12:10 p.m. PT. The game will be televised on ROOT Sports and will also have a live radio broadcast on Seattle Sports 710 and mariners.com.