By Larry LaRue
The News Tribune
TORONTO – It was as if the Seattle Mariners collectively awakened to realize they were playing the Toronto Blue Jays.
Oh, the Mariners had won three of the first five games between the two teams this year, but considering Toronto had 11 victories against teams not based in Seattle …
Well …
The Mariners unleashed mojo upon the Jays Thursday, in the form of a 15-2 blowout that served to end a string of close games against Toronto.
Statement? Of course the Mariners said no, but the Jays were left with the certain knowledge that they’d played a very, very good team.
“They kind of embarrassed us,” Jose Cruz Jr. said. “We didn’t play very well, and when you do that against a great team, bad things happen.”
In bunches.
As Joel Pineiro worked another dominant start – no earned runs in seven innings – his teammates missed a few early opportunities, then seemed to miss nothing the rest of the night.
“The first few innings we got the leadoff hitter on and didn’t score, and that’s frustrating,” Mark McLemore said. “We took care of that eventually.”
A Blue Jays team trying to find respectability had a long night of it against a Mariners offense that came alive:
“Some nights everything you hit falls in. Some nights everything you hit gets caught,” he said. “And some nights you don’t hit anything.”
Leading off the seventh, Cameron singled, stole second, stole third and scored a run that put Seattle ahead, 8-0. Later in the same inning, with two outs and the bases loaded, Cameron came up again.
And hit his third career grand slam.
“I’m hitting in a spot where I come up with a lot of guys on base,” Cameron said. “Some nights you don’t get it done. Tonight, we got it done.”
“We thought in spring training he’d hit, and he has,” manager Lou Piniella said of Guillen’s .302 average. “And he’s been productive as a hitter. He’s got – what – 28 RBI? He makes us a better team.”
“If get a hit in every game the rest of the year, I’m going to look like those guys in ZZ Top,” Boone promised.
For all that offense, and all those runs, it was 23-year-old right-hander Pineiro who set the tone for this game early. As Toronto worked out of jams in each of the first three innings, Pineiro retired nine of the first 10 Blue Jays he faced.
“We wanted seven innings from him tonight and he gave them to us,” Piniella said. “And he could have kept going. All his pitches were working tonight.”
“I feel locked in as a starter again now,” Pineiro said after his fourth start of the year. “I’m in a routine, I’m pitching every fifth day and I’m feeling pretty good.
“I’ve gone from 80 pitches to 90 some pitches to tonight, where I threw 109. By the end of the year, maybe I’ll get a complete game!”
What Pineiro has provided thus far works just fine – he’s 4-0 with a 1.85 earned run average – and on a night when he struck out six Blue Jays, he didn’t walk a batter.
“You watch him from center field, he’s not afraid to throw inside – and I mean throw strikes inside,” Cameron said. “We got him a lead and it didn’t bother him mentally, he just kept getting outs.”
Against the Blue Jays, that might sound easy but it hasn’t been for Seattle. Two of their first three wins against Toronto came in extra innings, and for whatever reason the Mariners hadn’t been able to put this team away.
“Some nights you face a pitcher who just shuts you out, and it doesn’t matter what he did in his last start or what he’ll do in his next one,” Cameron said.
“It’s not that we haven’t played them well, it’s that they’ve played us tough, too,” Boone said. “I’ve been on both sides of blowouts like this, and there are nights when no matter what the team does, it doesn’t work. That was the way it was for them tonight.
“We’ve all been there, and I’ve been on that side more times than I’d like to remember.”
Boone laughed.
“You just take the win and get out of town,” he said, “because if you make too much of it the next night you’re on the other end. Nothing humbles you like baseball.”
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