While Mark Lowe zeroes in on the Mariners’ record for scoreless innings to start a career, a member of the club’s minor league staff is cheering him on from afar.
Pat Rice, the Mariners’ minor league pitching coordinator, holds the club record with 13 scoreless innings in 1991. He pitched 52/3 shutout innings in his major league debut on May 18 at Yankee Stadium and didn’t allow a run until a relief appearance on June 5 when Pete Incaviglia hit a sacrifice fly at Detroit.
Lowe entered Friday with 122/3 straight innings without an earned run and Rice, while aware his name was close to being wiped from the Mariners’ record book, couldn’t have been happier.
“He’s had it way tougher than I had,” Rice said Friday as he prepared to travel from Colorado Springs to Peoria, Ariz. “It’s kind of easy to have a good start and roll up some innings like I did. But he has had pressure situations almost every time and he’s getting the job done.
“Although I guess you could consider my streak to be impressive just for the fact that I didn’t have nearly as good of stuff as he has.”
Rice, because of his role in helping develop pitchers in the Mariners’ system, takes pride in what Lowe has accomplished. And he’s as impressed with Lowe’s composure in tense situations as everyone else has been with the youngster who had pitched only at the Class A level until early this season.
“To be honest, if it was the middle of the season last year, I would have said I’d be surprised at how he’s handled it,” Rice said. “But when he left spring training this year, he was prepared and this hasn’t surprised me a bit.
“He found something at the end of spring training. Not only did his stuff get better and his pitches get better, but he knew it and felt it. He became more confident because of it.”
Soriano activated: Relief pitcher Rafael Soriano proved his right shoulder was sufficiently recovered with a throwing session Friday afternoon, and the Mariners activated him from the disabled list before the game.
Soriano, who hadn’t pitched since July 19 because of shoulder fatigue, returned to his role as the Mariners’ late right-handed setup reliever. It pushed Lowe back to his mid-inning role in the bullpen.
To make room for Soriano on the roster, the Mariners sent right-handed reliever Emiliano Fruto down to Class AAA Tacoma.
Reed begins exercises: Center fielder Jeremy Reed, out until early September because of a broken right thumb, was cleared Friday to begin strengthening exercises.
“They’re going to go off my pain threshold,” he said. “Whatever I can take. That means a lot of grip strengthening, crumpling newspapers. I should be able to put my glove on in 8-10 days. I can’t put it on yet, my thumb is still swollen.
Of note: Now that the trade deadline has passed, this is the time of the year when clubs quietly dangle players on the waiver wire and pull them back off if there’s a claim they don’t want to deal with. That’s one reason for a report – erroneous, according to the Mariners – that they had claimed Braves center fielder Andruw Jones. … The Mariners were elated to return to Seattle after playing Wednesday in Baltimore, where the official temperature was 102 at the first pitch. It was actually worst than that. “We had the temperature on the field at 120 the last two games in Baltimore,” trainer Rick Griffin said. “Our players drank so much water they sloshed when they walked.” He said the starting pitchers lost 5-8 pounds in those games. … Among those at the ballpark Friday was former manager Lou Piniella, who will handle commentary on today’s national telecast of the Mariners-Athletics game on Fox (channel 13).
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