SEATTLE — The hits still aren’t coming with much frequency. But nobody can claim that Ken Griffey Jr. has lost his sense of timing.
Griffey’s two-run homer in the fifth inning lifted the offensively deprived Seattle Mariners to a 3-1 victory over the Oakland A’s on Monday night at Safeco Field.
Jose Lopez also homered, in the third inning to give the Mariners a 1-0 lead, but without Griffey this game might have gone on until the pitching ran out the way these two teams are struggling to score.
Griffey came to bat in the fifth with Lopez on first with some stinging ribs after A’s starter Vin Mazzaro had stuck a fastball there.
Then Griffey got the ultimate revenge.
Mazzaro, who’d hit Griffey on his right leg in the first inning, stuck a fastball over the plate and Junior lined it into the right-field seats for a 3-0 Mariners lead. It was his 14th home run this season and his second in two days.
“You always try to make guys pay, but it wasn’t one of those things where I was looking to go up there and hit a home run. It just happened,” said Griffey, who also singled to bump his batting average to .225. “I was trying to get on base. It was a 1-0 game and I was trying to start something and happened to hit it out. That was it. It wasn’t about going up there and having any kind of revenge.”
Maybe, although it did prick up some ears on the Mariners’ bench.
“We heard about that in the dugout — ‘How dare they,’” manager Don Wakamatsu said. “He’s always got a flair for the dramatic. That was beautiful.”
Speaking of timing, there’s more.
Not only did Griffey’s homer make the difference in the victory, he hit it with some loving eyes watching. His mom, Birdie Griffey, was at the ballpark.
Lopez had doubled in the first inning and homered on a 2-0 pitch in the third, then got a little testy after Mazzaro plunked him with the first pitch he saw in the fifth. He glared at the Oakland right-hander and flung down his bat, but walked slowly to first base.
“I don’t believe they hit him on purpose,” Wakamatsu said. “I was with the (A’s) last year in Oakland and I know their temperament. I don’t know the kid but I’d like to think that he didn’t hit him on purpose.”
There was no retaliation from Mariner starter Ian Snell, who’d overwhelmed the A’s through five innings. He didn’t give up a hit until Daric Barton’s chopper up the middle with two outs in the fifth.
“That’s two starts in a row where this guy keeps improving,” Wakamatsu said of Snell. “The big thing for me was two walks against an awfully patient ballclub. He kept his pitch count down and attacked the zone. I couldn’t be happier with his outing.”
Snell is 2-1 with two straight victories in his five starts since being acquired last month from the Pirates.
“It was just hard for me to get accustomed to this league,” he said. “But now I’m starting to get used to it and starting use my other pitches besides my fastball, and it’s throwing hitters off and it’s helping me out a lot.”
Same for the Mariners’ defense, especially in the early innings when Snell kept his no-hitter alive.
Center fielder Franklin Gutierrez made a running catch at the warning track of Kurt Suzuki’s deep fly in the second inning and Russell Branyan snagged a hot smash up the first-base line to get Jack Cust in the fourth. Later, with Sean White in his second inning of relief, left fielder Michael Saunders made a diving catch of Mark Ellis’ sinking fly in the eighth.
David Aardsma pitched the ninth and was more like his early season self.
Aardsma, 0-2 with a 16.22 ERA in his past four appearances, gave up a leadoff ground-rule double to Jack Cust before getting the next three outs in the ninth to record his 29th save.
Read Kirby Arnold’s blog on the Mariners at www.heraldnet.com/marinersblog
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