SEATTLE — On Turn Back the Clock Day at Safeco Field, the Seattle Mariners could only wish things were like 1989.
Those Mariners were one game under .500 at the same point in the season, although they were headed toward the a fate similar to this team — a plunge toward the bottom of the division.
It continued Saturday for the present-day M’s in a 9-6 loss to the Cleveland Indians during which starting pitcher Miguel Batista was finished after two innings and eight runs, and the defense did little to bail him out.
“We did some things that didn’t look too pretty out there,” manager Jim Riggleman said.
It actually started the previous day when Saturday’s scheduled starting pitcher, Jarrod Washburn, came down with the flu. Batista, who was to start Monday against the Red Sox, took the ball Saturday and again was a short-timer on the mound.
Jhonny Peralta’s two-out RBI single off Ichiro Suzuki’s glove in right field and Shin-soo Choo’s two-run homer gave the Indians a quick 3-0 lead.
Batista got through the second inning well but faced five hitters in the third and gave up five hits before Riggleman pulled him.
The killer was Choo’s ground-rule double on a high fly to right-center field that center fielder Willie Bloomquist and right fielder Ichiro Suzuki converged on but never saw because of the bright sun. The ball bounced off the warning track and over the wall.
“I got there and the ball almost hit me in the head, but I couldn’t catch it because I couldn’t see it,” Bloomquist said. “It’s one of those plays you feel bad about when it happens because you could have caught it. But you can’t catch what you can’t see, I guess.”
Casey Blake followed with an RBI single that made the score 6-0 before Riggleman brought in left-hander Ryan Rowland-Smith.
Rowland-Smith got two outs but gave up a double to Franklin Gutierrez, walked Grady Sizemore and allowed Jamey Carroll’s RBI double, the Indians’ fifth double of the inning.
Bloomquist also was the victim of a tough error in the third when his throw from center field took a weird hop past both third baseman Adrian Beltre and Rowland-Smith, allowing Blake to score.
Batista, hampered by back, foot and groin ailments most of the season, has pitched two innings in each of his past two starts and hasn’t gone more than 51/3 in his past five.
“I felt like we had him out there healthy and ready to go,” Riggleman said. “He certainly didn’t have his best stuff out there, but we made it tough on him. We didn’t play well the couple innings he was in there. The numbers are going to look a lot worse than what he actually threw.”
That doesn’t mean Batista has lost his place in the rotation, although Riggleman said Rowland-Smith could wind up starting again himself.
“We toss that around a lot,” Riggleman said. “Starting is eventually going to be in the plans, but right now we’re getting some good work from him in the bullpen. It seems like throughout the system, we’ll be a little light at starting and we’re a little strong in the bullpen, so he might be a guy who makes that transition.”
Rowland-Smith gave up four hits and a run in four innings Saturday, lowering his ERA to 3.44.
Raul Ibanez continued his hot hitting, cracking a solo home run in the third inning — his 13th homer and 60th RBI this season.
Ichiro Suzuki singled and hit a two-run homer in his last two at-bats, pulling him within seven hits of 3,000 for his career when combining his totals from Japan and the major leagues. The home run, off Japanese reliever Masahide Kobayashi, broke Suzuki’s string of 40 straight singles and a career-long 136 plate appearances without an extra-base hit.
Read Kirby Arnold’s blog on the Mariners at www.heraldnet.com
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