SEATTLE — It didn’t take another loss by the Seattle Mariners on Sunday to add to the mystery, intrigue and disappointment of the 2010 season.
A couple of ejections early in their game against the L.A. Angels made it that way long before the Mariners suffered through another bullpen meltdown in a 9-4 loss at Safeco Field.
Before anybody in the crowd of 33,076 realized it — and that included the entire Mariners dugout — second baseman Chone Figgins was booted from the game before the third inning began. A couple of minutes later, after a discussion with umpires became hotter and hotter, manager Don Wakamatsu was gone, too.
What Figgins and Wakamatsu missed was a third straight loss to the Angels when the Mariners wasted an early two-run lead and another decent outing by starting pitcher Jason Vargas, then suffered through more misery with a bullpen that has crumbled the past three days.
The Mariners were outscored 27-7 in the series and the relievers allowed all but nine of those runs. Relievers pitched 10 innings in the three games, allowing 21 hits, eight walks and 18 earned runs.
Shawn Kelley, whose control problems led to Saturday’s loss, struggled again Sunday when he allowed four hits and two runs in the seventh inning, including Mike Napoli’s two-run homer to break a 4-4 tie. Kelley tried to bury a two-strike slider in the dirt but left it up and Napoli hit it over the right-field fence.
The Angels scored three runs in the ninth off closer David Aardsma, who was in the game because the Mariners’ relief pitching had become thin with such heavy use.
“We had struggles this whole series with the bullpen and it continued,” Wakamatsu said. “It’s something we’re going to look to right as we go forward into this road trip.”
How? The Mariners already have reached so much into their Class AAA Tacoma team that there’s not much left to grab. Sunday, they brought up left-hander Luke French, who had been starting at Tacoma, as long-relief relief.
“We’ll continue to work,” Wakamatsu said. “You go back and look at some of the (pitch) sequences, go back and look at some of the locations. There were balls up in the zone getting hammered.”
It wasn’t even a consolation that Wakamatsu didn’t have to watch it live. Wakamatsu was gone between the second and third innings in a double-whammy that got he and Figgins ejected.
The flash point was something Figgins said after he grounded out to end the second inning. Upset over a strike that plate umpire Tim Timmons called during that at-bat, Figgins said something about it after he grounded out — although it was so subtle that his disgust wasn’t obvious to many more people than the plate umpire.
Timmons ejected Figgins, and as the Mariners’ second baseman got in some stronger words, Wakamatsu emerged from the dugout and joined the discussion. First-base umpire Tim Tschida also joined and, after a minute of hearing Wakamatsu jaw, he ejected the Mariners’ manager.
It was the first ejection of Figgins’ major-league career and Wakamatsu’s second this season.
Figgins refused to talk about it. Wakamatsu said Figgins did nothing to show up the umps and didn’t deserve to be ejected.
“Figgy is a guy who is known for not arguing,” Wakamatsu said. “My whole point was, turn the cheek and move on.”
That’s what the Mariners, especially the bullpen, must do as they begin a 10-game road trip tonight with the first of four games at Texas.
It seems little question that the loss of right-hander Mark Lowe, who had been strong in late-inning setup, has hurt a relief corps that was forced to alter roles ahead of Aardsma.
“I’m going to keep working hard and get back on the horse,” Kelley said. “We’re grinding and still working hard. It’s not a lack of effort. We’re trying to figure it out. We’re in a slump as a whole. There are unbelievable guys in this bullpen and we’re going to fight.”
As the team left on its three-city trip, Lowe remained behind in mental and physical agony because of inflammation in his lower back. He’s had two epidurals and may undergo a third soon if he doesn’t begin feeling better.
“It’s miserable,” said Lowe, who struggles to walk completely upright.
The Mariners say he could wake up one day and feel great again, but Lowe isn’t even looking forward to that.
“I wake up expecting to feel miserable,” he said. “That way when I don’t feel better, I’m not disappointed.”
In a way, it’s a metaphor for what the team is going through.
Read Kirby Arnold’s blog on the Mariners at www.heraldnet.com/marinersblog.
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