SEATTLE – Gil Meche already solved the problems that got him sent to the minor leagues early this season. In the six weeks since Meche has been back with the Seattle Mariners, he had re-discovered the strike zone, pitched deep into games and become a winner again.
The one thing he lacked, a truly dominating performance, he accomplished Sunday.
Meche held the Boston Red Sox to five hits and pitched the Mariners’ first complete-game shutout this season in a 2-0 victory at Safeco Field.
“I kept saying, coming back here, that I was pleased with the results I was having, but I still hadn’t gone out there and shut somebody down,” Meche said. “I wanted to go out there and throw up zeroes.”
He needed to, with Boston starter Derek Lowe pitching a gem himself. The Mariners got five hits off Lowe in seven innings, the biggest being Raul Ibanez’s two-run home run in the sixth inning.
Ichiro Suzuki got two hits, giving him 231 in his race to the major league single-season record of 257.
Meche pitched a complete-game shutout four years ago in Kansas City, although even he discounts that one because it lasted only five innings because of rain. Sunday, under sunny skies, Meche pitched the Mariners’ first complete-game shutout since Joel Pineiro beat the Texas Rangers 4-0 on July 26, 2003.
“This is the game I’ve been waiting for,” said Meche, 4-1 with a 3.39 ERA in 10 starts since coming back from Class AAA Tacoma. “I’ve had some good success since I’ve been back, but this was the game. I kept waiting for my breaking ball to be there for the whole game.”
Meche had that breaking ball – actually a knuckle curve he’d been working on in his recent bullpen sessions – to accompany a fastball that never faded as the game went on. He threw 129 pitches, his high this season, and was hitting 95 mph on the stadium radar gun.
Meche also got two big breaks – vital in beating a team like the Red Sox – a first-inning baserunning blunder by Manny Ramirez that kept the Sox from scoring at least one run, and the homer by Ibanez that accounted for all of the Mariners’ scoring.
In the first, Johnny Damon led off with an infield hit and went to third on Ramirez’s one-out double. Jason Varitek hit a line drive to right that Ichiro Suzuki caught for the second out as Damon tagged at third and sprinted for home. Ramirez, however, already was headed for the Red Sox dugout, having lost track of the outs and thinking the inning had ended with Suzuki’s catch. He easily was doubled off second, just before Damon crossed the plate.
How big was that goof?
“When they get the lead, they feel pretty good about themselves,” Mariners manager Bob Melvin said. “The momentum really shifted our way.”
Meche faced only one other tough spot the rest of the game, in the sixth after he walked Damon and gave up a single to Orlando Cabrera with nobody out.
Ramirez stung a line drive toward the right-center field gap that second baseman Bret Boone caught with a high leap, and Meche took care of the rest. He struck out Varitek on a curveball, then got Kevin Millar on a pop foul for the third out.
“Boonie made the play of the day,” Meche said. “If he doesn’t catch that ball, they score a run and it’s first and second, maybe first and third. Now the game changes.”
It changed completely in the bottom of the sixth.
Edgar Martinez grounded a two-out single to center off Lowe, who’d allowed just three soft singles to that point. Ibanez looked at two balls, then crushed the next pitch over the center field fence for his 15th home run and a 2-0 M’s lead.
Meche worked around Trot Nixon’s leadoff single in the seventh, then pitched a 1-2-3 eighth that finished with a 94 mph fastball to strike out Ramirez on his 117th pitch of the game.
If Melvin had thought about pulling Meche before the ninth, that pitch convinced him otherwise.
“He felt strong and he wanted it,” Melvin said. “He wanted it bad.”
“I looked at the radar gun after the eighth, and it was saying 94 and 95,” Meche said. “If I’d been dragging at that time, I probably wouldn’t have let myself go back out there. But I felt great and I felt strong, and I wasn’t going to hurt myself by going back out there. Luckily, they let me.”
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