SEATTLE — By the time the music stopped playing, Doug Fister had found his rhythm.
Pitching early in Saturday’s game against the Tampa Bay Rays with the sounds of U2 warming up next door for a concert later at Qwest Field, Fister wobbled through two difficult inning before he pulled him
self together.
By then the Rays had scored three times, all in the second inning, on their way to a 3-2 victory over the Seattle Mariners at Safeco Field.
Rays rookie right-hander Jeremy Hellickson, who won both the American League rookie of the month and pitcher of the month awards fo
r May, snuffed the Mariners on three hits in 71⁄3 innings. Hellickson is 7-3 with a 2.64 earned run average.
Fister fell to 3-6 (3.29 earned run average) in a game that seemed early like it was headed toward a more lopsided margin than it finished.
He escaped two hits in a scoreless first, but couldn’t dodge three walks and three hits in the second, including Johnny Damon’s RBI bloop single and Ben Zobrist’s two-run bloop single. None of the Rays’ seven hits off Fister were scorched, but they found holes.
“That’s the game of baseball,” Fister said. “You don’t always have to hit the ball hard or hit it over the fence. It just has to find a hole and go in the right spot.”
After the second inning, Fister dominated the Rays the way Hellickson was stuffing the Mariners. Fister retired 12 straight before walking Sam Fuld with two outs in the sixth, and he made it through seven innings after it seemed four or five might be all he’d manage.
“He struggled in the one inning early on, but he was able to fight through it,” Wedge said. “I couldn’t be more impressed with what he did after that. For him to be out of sync the way he was in that one inning, and then to find it and get it back and get us deep in the ballgame, it was a great effort.”
Fister has pitched at least seven innings in each of his past five starts after doing it twice in his first seven.
“I continued to attack hitters and let the defense work,” Fister said. “That’s the name of the game, especially for me. We’ve got a defense from top to bottom that can play with any team out there. I would be foolish not to use it.”
The Mariners had two chances to score early against Hellickson and missed.
Jack Cust drew a leadoff walk in the second and reached third on Carlos Peguero’s pop-fly-hit to left field that Fuld lost in the sun. But Hellickson struck out Chone Figgins to end that threat.
In the fourth, Justin Smoak beat the Rays’ defensive shift with an opposite-field double to left field. He was thrown out at the plate by Rays right fielder Matt Joyce after tagging up on Adam Kennedy’s fly.
Hellickson retired 12 straight before Peguero doubled into the right-field corner with one out in the eighth. The Rays brought in reliever Joel Peralta, who got Figgins for the second out but hung a changeup that pinch hitter Miguel Olivo hit for a two-run homer.
That made the score 3-2, but Ichiro Suzuki grounded out to end the eight — leaving him hitless in his past 15 at-bats and with a .261 average.
“Miggy came up big for us there,” Wedge said of Olivo’s homer, the Mariners’ first pinch-hit homer since June 15 last year when Ryan Langerhans hit one. “You bring it to a one-run ballgame and anything can happen in the ninth inning.”
It didn’t happen this time, though.
Rays right-hander Kyle Farnsworth carved through Brendan Ryan, Smoak and Cust in the ninth to record his 11th save and give the Rays their first victory in the four-game series.
A victory in today’s finale would give the Mariners their sixth straight series victory, something they haven’t done since the 2001 season.
Read Kirby Arnold’s blog on the Mariners at www.heraldnet.com/marinersblog and follow his Twitter updates at @kirbyarnold.
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