SEATTLE — Doug Fister needed an outing like he’d put together the first five innings Thursday night to show what kind of hope there is for his future with the Seattle Mariners.
Then the past caught up with him and the Mariners.
Shin-Soo Choo, who came up with the Mariners before they traded him to the Cleveland Indians in 2006, hit a three-run double in the Indians’ four-run sixth inning when Fister faded fast.
Choo added the final blow in the ninth with a two-run homer off reliever Jamey Wright in the Indians’ 6-3 victory at Safeco Field.
“It was like watching two different ballgames,” Mariners manager Daren Brown said. “The first five innings Fister was really good and it looked like we were going to swing the bats well. It kind of fell apart in the sixth inning.”
The loss was the Mariners’ 82nd this season, clinching a losing record for the fifth time in the past seven years.
Losing seemed improbable the way the game began.
Fister pitched nearly perfect baseball through five innings, dinged only by Asdrubal Cabrera’s single in the second at-bat of the game. He retired the next 14 Indians hitters and, even better, the Mariners gave him a lead.
It came in a majestic way, too, when Russell Branyan hit a towering three-run home run off Indians starter Josh Tomlin in the third inning. The ball bounced off the seats in the third deck near the right-field foul pole.
Franklin Gutierrez also hit a sacrifice fly in the inning, and the 3-0 lead seemed like plenty considering how Fister was pitching. He seemed on his way to his first victory since Aug. 9 when he beat the A’s.
Luis Valbuena, another former Mariners prospect, began the sixth inning with a harmless-looking infield single before Fister got Lou Marson on a fly to right field.
He didn’t record another out.
Michael Brantley and Cabrera dumped back-to-back singles to right field that loaded the bases. Fister fell into a three-ball, one-strike count against Choo and left a pitch up in the zone.
Choo drove it to the warning track in right-center field, scoring all three runners to tie the score. Travis Hafner followed with an RBI single that gave the Indians a 4-3 lead, and Jayson Nix also singled before Brown pulled Fister.
“As good as he was the first five innings, it was hard to see that coming in the sixth,” Brown said. “You kept thinking with the bases loaded that he was going to make a pitch to get out of it.”
Fister was hoping for that, too.
“Until the sixth inning, I made pitches but in the sixth inning they weren’t in the quality locations,” he said. “Any time I get hit it’s going to be up. If I can keep the ball down and use the defense, I’m going to be all right.”
As quickly as Fister’s night turned, so did the Mariners’ offense.
Ichiro Suzuki had two of the Mariners’ seven hits through three innings, giving him 173 for the season with 28 games remaining in his quest to get 200 hits for the 10th straight season.
Jose Lopez followed Branyan’s home run with a single with two outs in the third inning, but that’s the last hit the Mariners got. Their only other baserunner was Ryan Langerhans, who reached when Nix, the Indians’ third baseman, let his popup drop near the mound for an error with one out in the fourth inning.
After that, Tomlin and relievers Tony Sipp and Chris Perez retired the final 16 Mariners to end the game.
“I thought we swung the bats pretty well and it looked like we were going to put some runs on the board,” Brown said. “The last few innings, we didn’t do a whole lot.”
Read Kirby Arnold’s blog on the Mariners at www.heraldnet.com/marinersblog
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