BALTIMORE – As a strategy, the prevent defense has never caught on in major league baseball, and now the Seattle Mariners know why.
In every inning of what became a 7-5 Mariners victory, it seemed the Baltimore Orioles loaded the bases – and then Seattle would try to prevent those runners from scoring.
“Unbelievable,” Bret Boone said. “It was like ‘load ‘em up, get ‘em out’ tonight. I don’t know how our pitchers got out of this without giving up more than five runs.”
Rarely has a staff had to work harder to snap a five-game losing streak than the Mariners did in this one. And rarely has manager Bob Melvin had to do more to record a win – and this one was the 100th of his career.
“We were in trouble a lot and got a lot of huge outs,” Melvin said.
After a rainout, the Mariners’ bullpen was fresh once this one got started after a 29-minute rain delay. Three hours and 46 minutes later, Ron Villone had a win, Eddie Guardado a save and the bullpen was tired again.
But happy.
“Whatever it takes,” Guardado said. “I don’t like coming in with the bases loaded, but coming in with the bases loaded and Javy Lopez up?”
This is the kind of game the two teams played. Seattle trailed 1-0 and 2-1, forged ties at 1, 2 and 5 and lost a 5-2 lead before winning.
That was how the night went. No matter what matchups Melvin and pitching coach Bryan Price tried to arrange, the bottom line always seemed to be the same, everyone had to pitch out of a jam Tuesday.
Gil Meche had the bases loaded in the first inning and needed 40 pitches to get three outs, but limited the damage to one run. In the second inning, he needed 30 more pitches to get three outs, and held Baltimore scoreless.
“I’d put one 94 mph on the inside corner and someone fouled it off, then a slider down and away and somebody would foul it off,” Meche said. “I didn’t give in, but man, they just got a little piece of a ton of pitches.”
After three innings, Meche was done – trailing 2-1 and having thrown 87 pitches on a cold, blustery night.
“I could have gone back out there,” he said, “but maybe it was time for a fresh arm.”
Melvin had plenty of those, and needed all but the one owned by rookie reliever Matt Thornton.
Forced to eat six innings with his bullpen, Melvin got two innings from Julio Mateo, then 1 2/3more from Villone, which got the Mariners into the eighth inning with a two-run lead.
Villone walked the first two batters that inning and gave way to Shigetoshi Hasegawa, who got one out, then hit Miguel Tejada to load the bases.
That brought up Mariners killer Rafael Palmeiro, who’d already homered Tuesday. And Melvin went to his bullpen again.
“We’ve got Mike Myers as a left-handed specialist, and that’s what we needed,” he said.
Myers got Palmeiro on a pop-up. Melvin brought in Guardado to face Lopez with the bases still loaded, and Lopez grounded into a tough force out, shortstop to second base.
Comparatively, the ninth inning when easily.
“We know we’re going to score some runs, we just need someone to stop the other guys,” Boone said. “Tonight we didn’t stop them, but we held them. That was enough.”
It was enough because the bend-but-don’t-shatter pitching style held for the night, and the Mariners rapped out 13 hits and held on. On Sunday, they scored six runs and lost by eight.
This time, they scored seven and won by two.
Dan Wilson homered to forge an early tie, then broke that 5-5 deadlock with an RBI single in the seventh inning. It was a night of quiet heroics for Seattle:
“I was starting to wonder what it would take to win, and all it took was the whole team,” Guardado said, laughing. “Everybody got a piece of this one.”
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