M’s lose another close game, this time 4-2 to A’s

SEATTLE – OK, to put losing in perspective, consider this:

Somewhere in the Tampa Bay Devil Rays’ clubhouse, there’s a door to the manager’s office that was either (a) closed, or (b) splintered.

Mike Hargrove is no Lou Piniella, and this season he can thank his lucky stars for that. While Piniella’s Tampa Bay Devil Rays found a way to spit up an eight-run lead and lose by nine Tuesday night to the Yankees, Hargrove’s Seattle Mariners did what they’ve done all season.

They played another close game and, this time, lost 4-2 to the Oakland A’s.

Rich Harden, pitching his first game since May 13 because of an oblique injury, held the Mariners to two hits and a run in five innings before Oakland relievers Keiichi Yabu, Ricardo Rincon and Justin Duchscherer held them off.

Yes, the Mariners continue to look up at the .500 mark – they’re now 31-38 and just a half game ahead of Oakland and the basement in the American League West Division – but they’ve been competitive most of the time, just not victorious.

Of the Mariners’ 69 games, 47 have been decided by three runs or less, and 23 of those were by one run.

“That says a lot about this ballclub,” Hargrove said. “We’ve given ourselves a chance night-in and night-out to win games, and eventually it’s going to start turning our way.”

It could have turned on three different at-bats Tuesday, when the Mariners had runners on the bases and hit the ball hard without scoring.

Richie Sexson grounded into two inning-ending double plays, in the sixth and eighth innings, after the Mariners had put two runners on base with one out. And in the fifth, with Oakland ahead 4-1, two runners on and two outs, Pat Borders launched a fly to the wall that A’s center fielder Mark Kotsay caught on the dead run.

“That probably is the one that hurt the most,” Hargrove said. “It would score a minimum of two runs and gets us back to 4-3.”

Instead, the Mariners were left to keep the game close and work up another rally, which they nearly did twice.

In the sixth, with Adrian Beltre on first and Ichiro Suzuki on second, Sexson hit a sharp grounder to third baseman Eric Chavez, who turned an around-the-horn double play that kept the score 4-1.

And in the eighth, a carbon copy.

The Mariners had scored once in the inning on Beltre’s RBI single to make it a 4-2 score. Sexson came up with Beltre on first, Randy Winn on second and Hargrove loving how the situation set itself.

“I’ll take my chances any day with Richie Sexson,” Hargrove said. “He hit both those balls hard.”

He hit it hard, but to the wrong spot.

Sexson’s sharp one-hopper to Chavez began another double play that wiped out the Mariners’ final chance to score. Duchscherer retired the Mariners in order in the ninth.

“Truth be told, we probably hit the ball harder than they hit it tonight,” Hargrove said. “But they bunched them all in two innings and got four runs out of it. Theirs fell in and ours didn’t.”

Two innings, the third and fourth, cost Mariners starter Joel Pineiro, who fell to 2-4 after a string of six no-decisions.

He held the A’s to eight hits in eight innings but stumbled when the A’s scored twice in the third and twice in the fourth.

Dan Johnson led off the third with a long home run to right, his first of the season, and the A’s took a 2-1 lead when Pineiro walked Marco Scutaro before Jason Kendall and Mark Kotsay hit back-to-back singles. Kotsay’s opposite-field hit drove in Scutaro.

Scott Hatteberg led off the fourth with a single to right and went to third on Bobby Kielty’s single, then scored when Johnson hit a sacrifice fly to left. Pineiro struck out Nick Swisher, but Scutaro singled to center to drive home Kielty for a 4-1 lead.

That was plenty for Harden, who showed little rust after missing nearly six weeks with the oblique injury. He allowed two hits in five innings, and only Jose Lopez’s sacrifice fly in the second inning produced a run for the Mariners.

“He settles in and throws around 94, 95, and sometimes at 98,” Hargrove said of Harden. “What makes him so tough is not necessarily how hard he throws, it’s his real good split. I don’t know if there’s anybody in our league who has better stuff than this guy.

“We hit him, but they just made good plays.”

That was the difference in yet another close game by the Mariners.