SEATTLE — There is no statistic in baseball for brain cramps, unless you count the number of times Seattle Mariners manager Jim Riggleman has benched a player this season.
He did it Sunday, benching second baseman Jose Lopez midway through an 11-3 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays that featured Mariners mistakes from the first play of the game.
Catcher Jeff Clement dropped a popup on that one and tied a franchise record with three passed balls. Jeremy Reed popped out trying to bunt. Sean Green threw two wild pitches and Mariners pitchers served up three home runs, two by Rays third baseman Willy Aybar.
Lopez, however, committed the goof that galled Riggleman most.
Lopez had been charged with an error in the top of the fourth inning when Clement’s throw bounced past him and into center field as Akinori Iwamura stole second base. Clement’s throw was on the bag but Lopez didn’t get his glove down to catch it.
Lopez was due to bat in the bottom of the fourth, but Riggleman replaced him with Tug Hulett, who’d been called up from Class AAA Tacoma earlier in the day.
All Riggleman would say was that Clement’s throw should have been caught.
“When you take a regular out in the middle of a game, it’s going to raise questions,” Riggleman said. “I haven’t talked to Jose yet. After I talk to him, I’ll find words to explain it. But I want to get those words out to him first.”
During the last road trip, Riggleman benched shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt one day after he failed to get a bunt down at Texas. Earlier in the season, former manager John McLaren also benched Betancourt.
Saturday night, Riggleman clearly wasn’t enthused with at least one play by Lopez, who tried to use his glove to flip a grounder to Betancourt at second instead of throwing it.
Lopez, whose homer in the second inning Sunday pulled the Mariners with 3-1 of the Rays, said Riggleman didn’t tell him why he was benched.
He clearly wasn’t pleased.
“Ask the manager. I have no idea,” Lopez said. “I’ve got nothing to say.”
All Riggleman said was that Lopez probably would return to the lineup Tuesday in Anaheim when the Mariners begin an eight-game road trip.
“He’s a vital part of our lineup and we want him in there,” Riggleman said. “Any time you take someone out of your lineup who’s one of your big guns, that hurts your ballclub.”
The hurt extended well beyond Lopez on Sunday.
Clement, who has struggled with popups, let one by Iwamura drop in front of the plate on the second pitch of the game. He also committed three passed balls on knuckleballs from R.A. Dickey that got away, tying Jerry Narron’s 1980 club record for passed balls.
“You can really look like you’re having a tough day when a knuckleballer is throwing. He did the best he could with it,” Riggleman said. “Jeff is an offensive guy and the defense is a work in progress, but he has caught and blocked pitches very well.”
Dickey gave up eight hits and eight runs in five innings, including Aybar’s three-run homer in the second inning and Shawn Riggins’ three-run homer in the fifth.
Lopez’s error, the popped-up bunt by Reed, two wild pitches by Green and a collection of weak at-bats from beginning to end completed the ugly picture.
“It was just a bad ballgame,” Riggleman said. “It’s not in line with the way we’ve played lately. We’ve had so many (close losses) we looked like we should have won. Today it looked like we didn’t belong on the same field.”
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