By Kirby Arnold
Herald Writer
CLEVELAND – So now we know Ichiro Suzuki’s rainy-day secret.
Grab your pillow, take a nice nap, wake up and beat the Cleveland Indians.
Suzuki continued to tear apart Indians pitching in Game 4 of the American League Division Series on Sunday, going 3-for-5 to raise his batting average to .563 in the series.
A rain delay of nearly 2 1/2hours did little to affect Suzuki’s preparation in the Mariners’ most important game of the season. A loss would have eliminated them from the playoffs.
“First of all, I prepared for the game for 1:20 (Cleveland time) and I loosened up,” Suzuki said. “And once I heard that the game would be rain delayed, I took a nap using my pillow.”
Not only was Suzuki prepared for Indians pitcher Bartolo Colon, he was ready for the weather.
“I brought my pillow, so I prepared for a rain delay,” he said. “And once I woke up, I just prepared again for the game.”
Suzuki reached base in four of his five plate appearances, including a first-inning grounder that forced the best-fielding shortstop in baseball into a mistake.
Suzuki hit a high hopper to the Indians’ Omar Vizquel, who dropped the ball for an error as he tried to get it quickly enough to throw out Suzuki. It was just the second postseason error in 271 chances for Vizquel.
Suzuki was erased on a double play in the first inning and he grounded out in the third, but he singled in his final three at-bats, including a two-out hit in the seventh inning that drove in the Mariners’ second run.
“He’s been our go-to guy this year. He’s done it time and time again,” teammate Mike Cameron said. “He’s been out there (on base), but we’ve just got to move him around and give him an opportunity to score some runs.”
Seeing red: Mariners manager Lou Piniella came unglued in the bottom of the seventh inning when Ellis Burks struck out against Jeff Nelson but reached first base when the high pitch nicked catcher Tom Lampkin’s glove and sailed to the backstop.
The ball rebounded hard enough back to Lampkin that Juan Gonzalez, who stood on third, couldn’t score.
Piniella was livid that plate umpire Rick Reed did not signal that Burks had swung and that the pitch was a strike. Piniella went nose-to-nose with Reed and screamed like no other time at an umpire this season.
“I was looking to the home plate umpire and there was no call made,” Piniella said. “I was asking him, ‘How does my catcher know to throw the ball to first base if nobody makes a call?’”
Then first-base umpire Ed Rapuano joined the discussion.
“He said that he had called it,” Piniella said. “But I hadn’t seen it.”
Swinging better: Bret Boone was only 1-for-5 Sunday, but that was a vast improvement for the American League RBI champion who has endured a horrible offensive series.
Boone is hitting .118 in the series, but he got a ninth-inning single and stole second base.
“I think that’ll loosen him up a little bit,” Piniella said. “I think he’s been pressing a little bit, trying to do a little bit too much. I think he’ll be nice and relaxed tomorrow.”
Where’s the ball? Mike Cameron lost sight of a fly ball by Juan Gonzalez in the seventh inning and it led to the Indians’ second run.
Gonzalez hit a high and seemingly catchable fly off Freddy Garcia to lead off the bottom of the seventh, but it sailed over Cameron’s head and dropped on the grass in front of the warning track.
“He got out in front of it a little bit and I thought he popped it up,” Cameron said. “I took two steps in and by that time the ball was traveling. It got up in that wind and I tried to get back there, and for one split second I lost it.”
The play cost Garcia a chance to finish the inning, said Piniella, who brought in Jeff Nelson after Garcia got Jim Thome on a grounder for the first out.
“That basically changed the way we used our pitching,” Piniella said. “If he (Cameron) catches that ball, Freddy would have finished that inning and we might have let him go out to start the next one.”
Fresh staff: The Mariners used Nelson, Arthur Rhodes and Kazuhiro Sasaki to finish the game, but that won’t affect any of them for today.
“Our pitching is fine,” Piniella said. “We’ve got Jamie (Moyer) who can give us about what we got today from Freddy, and our bullpen is fine. Rhodsie is ready to go, so is Sasaki, Nelson, (Norm) Charlton, all of them.”
Fantasy lineup: Here’s a batting order you’ll never see: Mark McLemore batting first, Stan Javier second, Suzuki third.
It was a lineup that Piniella never hung on the wall, although it was more than a fantasy as he considered ways to wake up a listless Seattle Mariners offense before Game 4.
The Mariners’ 2-3-4-5 hitters were a combined 3-for-41 after three games of the American League Division Series against Cleveland.
“I thought about hitting Ichiro third, and that was what I was alluding to the other day,” Piniella said.
Three days ago, Piniella hinted at big lineup changes for Sunday against Bartolo Colon, who pitched eight shutout innings on Tuesday in Cleveland’s 5-0 Game 1 victory.
Instead, Piniella ran out the same players he used in Game 1, with a couple of wrinkles. He moved designated hitter Edgar Martinez to third in the batting order and dropped Boone (.083) to fourth, and pushed Javier to sixth and Cameron to seventh.
There was speculation that Piniella might unload the left-handers off his bench, with Lampkin catching and Al Martin playing left field. Martin has an injured elbow and hasn’t thrown overhand for weeks.
“We went with this lineup all year and we just changed it around a little bit,” Piniella said. “Danny (Wilson) has caught (Freddy) Garcia every time this year. We’ve got Martin who really can’t throw, so we really didn’t have many options.”
Many of the options Piniella did have were lost when shortstop Carlos Guillen was diagnosed with tuberculosis last month.
“He gave me another left-handed bat in the lineup and he’s a switch-hitter,” Piniella said. “He can hit second against left-handed pitching and hit the ball very well and get us deeper into the lineup.”
With Guillen in the lineup, Piniella could play the switch-hitting McLemore in left field against right-handed hitters or use him as a late-inning pinch-hitter when Jay Buhner starts against lefties.
The Guillen illness wiped out those options.
“But these things happen,” Piniella said. “Whether it’s an injury, whether it’s an illness or a disease, you’ve just got to go play through it.”
How rainy was it? At one time during the long delay Sunday, the rain was so heavy that it was difficult to see from one side of the stadium to the other.
It rained so hard that the press box sprung a few leaks around the glass windows and workers laid dozens of towels to keep water from running onto notebooks and computers.
Workers pulled down the huge American Flag in center field after the wind and rain turned it into a soggy spinnaker after it wrapped around the flagpole.
Most of the fans dealt with their boredom by watching the Browns-Bengals game on the stadium big screen.
When the game started, the temperature was 58 degrees, 19 degrees lower than Saturday.
One more delay: After a rain delay of more than two hours, Sunday’s first pitch had to wait even longer. Bartolo Colon had to change his shirt.
Colon was wearing a white T-shirt under his blue Indians jersey, and Piniella pointed it out to plate umpire Rick Reed.
Reed ordered him to make a color change, and Colon ducked into the clubhouse for about three minutes and returned to the mound with a gray shirt under the jersey.
“I talked to the umpire about the white T-shirt,” Piniella said. “The rules clearly state you can’t have a white T-shirt. He throws hard enough already.”
Man of steal: When Cleveland’s Omar Vizquel stole second base in the sixth inning, he became the all-time stolen base leader in a division series. He has 10 in division series play, leaving teammate Kenny Lofton and Rickey Henderson tied for second at nine.
No changes: In their search for solutions to Moyer, there’s not much the Indians can do to change their lineup today.
“The only two guys I could take out would be (Kenny) Lofton and (Jim) Thome,” manager Charlie Manuel said.
That’s highly unlikely, given that Lofton remains one of the more dangerous leadoff men in baseball despite a sub-par season and Thome is one of the best power hitters in the game.
“I think Thome can definitely hit Moyer,” Manuel said. “He’s a threat ever time he goes to the plate.”
Moyer struck out Thome twice in Game 2.
Not for public consumption: Piniella, on what he might have done had the hit-and-run play in the seventh inning – with Stan Javier hitting and John Olerud running – not worked.
“If he doesn’t hit it, then I’ll go take a walk away from the camera view,” Piniella said.
It wasn’t necessary. Javier hit a single that helped start a three-run rally.
Piniella wasn’t sure if he would start the switch-hitting Javier today against left-handed Chuck Finley. On Thursday when Finley pitched, Jay Buhner started in left field.
“I’m going to think about it on the airplane,” Piniella said. “It’s a tough call. Stan has played all year against lefties and Jay played two games (in the series), but we’ll see.”
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