CHICAGO – The Seattle Mariners are losing track of losing.
They cannot remember a year like this – most of them weren’t with the team when it last stumbled so badly. And they can no longer say which losses bother them most.
“They all do,” Edgar Martinez said.
Still, after losing to the Chicago White Sox, 6-2 – their seventh consecutive defeat – the numbers are speaking louder than any player could.
* The Mariners are 20 games under .500, a level they haven’t seen since Aug. 5, 1994.
* They now feature the major league’s second 10-game losing pitcher, Joel Pineiro.
* Their batting average (.257) is 13th in the 14-team American League.
* During the losing streak, their earned run average is just under 9.00.
“We get runs, like we did in Toronto, we don’t get quality pitching,” manager Bob Melvin said. “We get good pitching, we don’t score. We don’t seem to be able to get out of that rut.”
Asked if his team was playing out the final games until the All-Star break, Melvin shook his head.
“That’s dangerous, going through the motions, and I don’t think we’re doing that,” Melvin said.
No, what they’re doing is losing. Consistently, relentlessly, perpetually.
“There was no explanation a month ago, there’s none now,” Bret Boone said.
To win this game, Pineiro would have had to hold the White Sox to one run, and Carlos Lee made that a moot point with a two-run home run in the third inning. Chicago didn’t need it, but Lee hit a three-run home run in the seventh inning.
“(Pineiro) pitched better than the score indicates,” Melvin said, “but when he made a mistake, they beat him with it.”
If they are not waiting for the All-Star break and the three off days that presents for all but one of them – Ichiro Suzuki will represent the team in Houston – the Mariners seem to be awaiting something.
Virtually all of the 25 active players expects something to happen soon.
* Raul Ibanez could come off the disabled list today, and if he does, the team will option Hiram Bocachica back to Tacoma. When he strained a hamstring last month, Ibanez was leading the club in home runs and RBI.
* Rich Aurilia has been on the trading block now for six weeks without a serious nibble. The team that talked of releasing him in late May is still talking about the possibility.
* The transition from the team that began the season and the one that will end it in Seattle has begun. Five current Mariners – Pat Borders, Justin Leone, Travis Blackley, Matt Thornton and Bocachica – began the season as Rainiers.
* Freddy Garcia and Ben Davis have been traded, and the Mariners have been called about a half dozen other players in trade, including Eddie Guardado, Dave Hansen, Bret Boone, Mike Myers and Ron Villone.
* The Mariners have a handful of veterans who are struggling by their own standards and know they won’t be asked back in 2005. John Olerud, Martinez and Aurilia are gone. Dan Wilson and Bret Boone might not be back.
Against that backdrop, the Mariners are a team in name only. The batters in the heart of their lineup – Boone, Martinez and Spiezio on Friday – didn’t produce a hit. The runs they got came on solo home runs by Jolbert Cabrera and Randy Winn.
The best shot Seattle had to get back into this game came in the seventh inning, and Melvin used his best hitter off the bench, Dave Hansen. Hansen, hitting for Leone, drew a two-out walk as Chicago pitched around him to load the bases.
But Jon Garland got Wilson on a routine fly ball, and another rally was gone.
Pineiro, who has pitched well since a 1-0 loss to Houston on May 8, is now 3-2 in that span. In his three wins, he’s allowed four earned runs. In the two losses, eight runs.
Asked to help write the story of this game, Boone thought a moment and shrugged.
“Say ‘Jon Garland was masterful, kept the Mariners offense off-balance and blah, blah, blah,” he said. “You think it’s tough writing about this? Try living it. You think it can’t get worse, but it does.”
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