SEATTLE — The Seattle Mariners misfired throughout the game on chances to push home one more run that could have made a difference — including a 10th-inning opportunity that would have won the game.
Then the Tampa Bay Rays did what the Mariners couldn’t Saturday night at Safeco Field.
A sacrifice fly by Dioner Navarro pushed home the go-ahead run in the 11th inning of an 8-7 Rays victory.
The Mariners, having come back to tie the score with two runs in the eighth, had the winning run within 90 feet with one out in the 10th and couldn’t score.
Adrian Beltre, batting with the bases loaded and five players on the Rays infield, grounded to third base for an inning-ending double play.
What’s worse, that inning might have cost them versatile bench player Willie Bloomquist for a while. Bloomquist suffered a strained right hamstring after his sprint to first base in the 10th. as he beat a relay throw to avoid a double play and had to be helped off the field.
Before this one ended, the Mariners had used pitcher Jarrod Washburn as a pinch runner and lost their DH with all the late changes. Miguel Batista, who pitched the 11th, was second in the batting order.
Interestingly, Batista became the loser in a game he would have started had he not struggled so badly in the rotation. Ryan Rowland-Smith replaced him and pitched well until the Rays scored six times in the sixth inning _ three of those runs off him.
Batista, the sixth pitcher used by the Mariners, walked Ben Zobrist to start the 11th. Zobrist stole second, reached third on Willy Aybar’s groundout, then scored on Navarro’s sacrifice fly to center.
Despite building a five-run lead after two innings, there was an uneasy feeling the Mariners would need more.
Ryan Rowland-Smith, making his first start after being recalled from Class AAA Tacoma, had muffled the Rays on five hits through five innings, burned only on Gabe Gross’ leadoff home run in the third inning to make the score 5-1.
Rowland-Smith, in fact, outpitched Rays starter Matt Garza through five innings, but the Mariners had chances to knock Garza from the game and didn’t.
Ichiro Suzuki’s first-inning home run and Adrian Beltre’s RBI ground out gave the Mariners a 2-0 lead.
In the second, Bryan LaHair led off with a single, Kenji Johjima doubled and Yuniesky Betancourt drove home a run with a single. Suzuki followed with an RBI single, and then the Mariners’ offensive frustration began.
Jeremy Reed grounded into a double play, which pushed home the third run of the inning but also cleared off the bases. Garza got the third out when Raul Ibanez grounded to second.
The third inning started well and finished worse.
Beltre singled and Jose Lopez doubled to put runners on first and third with nobody out. Garza then got Wladimir Balentien to pop out, LaHair on a fly to right _ too shallow for Beltre to tag and score _ and Johjima on a pop foul to the catcher.
While the Mariners jumped on Garza early, they didn’t put him away.
That came back to burn the M’s in the sixth, when Rowland-Smith got the first two hitters out, then fell victim to some shaky defense.
It started when Willie Aybar hit a two-out double to left and Rowland-Smith walked Dioner Navarro.
Gross hit a bouncer up the middle that Jose Lopez couldn’t grab cleanly, giving Gross an infield single that loaded the bases.
Akinori Iwamura then bounced a grounder in the hole between first and second that bounced off Lopez’s glove as he dived for it. That scored a run and also brought manager Jim Riggleman from the dugout to pull Rowland-Smith.
Left-hander Cesar Jimenez took over and couldn’t get the third out.
B.J. Upton hit a two-run double to left, Carl Crawford an two-run double to center and Carlos Pena a run-scoring single to right. Mercy to the Mariners came when Pena was thrown out trying to reach second base.
All of that gave the Rays a 7-5 lead, which stood through another Mariners misfire in the seventh. Reed led off with a single and Ibanez walked.
Right-hander Grant Balfour replaced Garza and carved through the next three Mariners, getting Beltre on a grounder to the mound, Lopez on a strikeout and Balentien on a fly to center that ended the inning, leaving runners at first and third.
The Mariners finally converted in the eighth to tie the score.
Against right-hander Dan Wheeler, LaHair it a ground-rule double to left and pinch-hitter Jeff Clement doubled to center, scoring LaHair for a 7-6 score.
Miguel Cairo pinch-ran for Clement and Yuniesky Betancourt was asked to bunt him to third. That’s been a challenge for Betancourt this year, and he failed again with a pop foul to the catcher.
Suzuki bailed him out, driving a single to center field to score Cairo with the tying run. It also was Suzuki’s 1,742nd career hit, tying him with Ken Griffey Jr. for second on the Mariners’ all-time list. Edgar Martinez leads with 2,247.
J.J. Putz pitched around a leadoff single by Pena to keep the score tied in the ninth, and Rays right-hander Chad Bradford did the same in the bottom of the inning after Lopez singled with one out.
Putz put himself into a jam in the 10th, walking three straight after he’d started the inning by striking out Gross. Then he got out of it.
Putz struck out Pena and had two strikes on Erik Hinske, who sliced a line drive that Betancourt grabbed with a leaping backhand catch for the third out.
Red Kirby Arnold’s blog on the Mariners at www.heraldnet.com
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