SEATTLE — On another night of intrigue with the Seattle Mariners, internet reports about shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt were generating more hits than the M’s themselves against the Texas Rangers.
Then Franklin Gutierrez stepped to the plate in the eighth inning and turned the focus solely on Safeco Field.
Gutierrez’s three-run home run with two outs in the eighth and his team behind by a run lifted the Mariners to a 3-1 victory Thursday in the opener of a four-game series against the Rangers.
“We got the first one,” said Ken Griffey Jr., whose walk against Rangers left-hander C.J. Wilson brought Gutierrez to the plate.
Nobody needed to be reminded of the importance of this game.
The Mariners trailed the American League West-leading Rangers by 4½ games, and the series would do a lot to determine their fate going into the July 31 trade deadline. A four-game pratfall against the Rangers could turn them into an organization looking more to the future than the stretch drive.
Even that became part of the story line as the night started.
In Tacoma, where Betancourt was to play the second game of his injury rehab stint with the Class AAA Rainiers, he was scratched just before the game. With a scout from the Pittsburgh Pirates at Safeco Field and trade rumors involving Pirates shortstop Jack Wilson and second baseman Freddy Sanchez having swirled for weeks, the online blogs were active.
“I can’t comment,” Mariners general manager Jack Zduriencik said after the game.
The Mariners and Rangers carried on their business with impressive efficiency from the mound.
Mariners starter Felix Hernandez limited the Rangers to three hits through eight innings, allowing only a sixth-inning run on his wild pitch.
Rangers starter Tommy Hunter, a two-time Olympic judo champion making his seventh major league start, body dropped six shutout innings on the Mariners. Right-hander Darren O’Day cruised through the bottom of the Mariners’ order in the seventh, and left-hander C.J. Wilson took over in the eighth, when the Mariners finally pounced.
Ichiro Suzuki slapped a flare into left field that bounced away after David Murphy’s diving attempt, allowing Suzuki reached second with a double. Russell Branyan grounded back to the mound and Jose Lopez flied out, bringing Griffey to the plate.
Despite his .215 average, teams have pitched Griffey carefully in situations like this, and Wilson was no different. He threw three straight balls before Griffey swung hard and missed a fastball on the inner half.
“When it was 3-0, I was looking to hit it out,” Griffey said.
He took a pitch for strike two and changed his approach, thinking only about drawing a walk in order to bring hot-hitting Gutierrez to the plate.
“It’s amazing the presence he has in the lineup,” Wakamatsu said of Griffey. “Teams still don’t want to pitch to him because they look up there and see that he’s got 10 home runs this year and 621 in his career. That walk allowed us to get righty on lefty and allowed us to get the hottest hitter on the team up there.”
Griffey did have a beef after Wakamatsu sent Josh Wilson to first base as a pinch runner.
“Junior said I was micro-managing when I pinch-ran for him,” Wakamatsu said. “He told me, “I can score on a home run.’”
One pitch later, he could have.
Gutierrez crushed a first-pitch fastball over the fence in left-center field to give the Mariners a sudden 3-1 lead and extend his own hot streak. Gutierrez has a career-best 12-game hitting streak and at least one hit in 20 of his past 22 games, with a .395 average in that span.
“I wasn’t sure if it was out, but I felt like I hit it good,” Gutierrez said. “You never know when you hit it to center field here.”
In the dugout, Hernandez only heard the crowd erupt when Gutierrez homered, having buried his head in a towel to contemplate what was headed toward a tough loss.
“I was thinking, ‘We can’t lose this game 1-0. Not to Texas,’” Hernandez said. “Then I heard the crowd and I looked up.”
Of course, the Mariners still had three outs to get. One day earlier, that was a problem when closer David Aardsma blew a three-run lead and lost to the Orioles. This time, Aardsma got three fly outs and his 18th save.
Read Kirby Arnold’s blog on the Mariners at www.heraldnet.com\marinersblog
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