In a blowout loss, there’s Ichiro intrigue

After a long game, a 13-7 Mariners loss to the Blue Jays, we’ll make this fairly short.

Thanks to a bunch of young players who aren’t afraid to swing the bat and certainly don’t fold when they’re behind by six runs, the Mariners came back and tied the score after the Jays scored six runs in the first inning off Jason Vargas.

Casper Wells hit another home run – four in the past four games – and Miguel Olivo followed that with a homer in a three-run second inning. In the third, rookie left fielder Trayvon Robinson drove home two runs with a single and Kyle Seager another with a single, tying the score 6-6.

Seager also had an RBI in the fifth with a single after Robinson’s two-out double, but that run merely made it a 10-7 game after Toronto scored four runs in the top of the fifth off Vargas and reliever Tom Wilhelmsen.

So much for the scoring (the Jays scored three more in the sixth). There’s also intrigue.

With the Mariners behind by three runs and runners on first and second with two outs in the fifth, Ichiro Suzuki dropped a bunt. Jays pitcher Luis Perez fielded it and threw out Ichiro for the third out, but it definitely raised a lot of eyebrows because Ichiro has laid ‘em down in non-bunting situations before.

With him in the late stage of what looks like a futile push to get 200 hits (he’s at 133 with 41 games remaining), a play like that make a person go “Hmmmmmm.” That’s kind of the reaction by Mariners manager Eric Wedge, who said he spoke with Ichiro after the bunt and told him he should have swung away.

“I still want him to swing the bat right there,” Wedge said. “He’s trying to keep the inning going and get to the next guy with the third baseman playing back. But in that situation with two outs, I want him to swing the bat. We talked about it.

“If it’s one out, different set of circumstances. But with two outs, as good a hitter as he is, I’d like to see him swing the bat there.”

Ichiro’s response when Wedge addressed him?

“He understood,” Wedge said.

A few other notes after this one:

Catcher Miguel Olivo took a foul tip off the mask in the fifth inning and was knocked woozy. He batted in the bottom of the inning – striking out – and Wedge replaced him with Josh Bard in the sixth. Olivo was being examined after the game and no report was available.

Second baseman Dustin Ackley suffered a cut on his left hand after J.P. Arencibia slid hard into him in the fifth inning. He was taped up and stayed in the game.