SEATTLE – The game started at 1:05 Sunday afternoon. The Seattle Mariners began hitting at 2:05.
By then, offense arrived too late again for the Mariners to avoid another slow start that has become a troubling pattern.
The Detroit Tigers had three runs before the Mariners got a hit in what became a 6-4 loss to the Tigers at Safeco Field, wasting pitcher Felix Hernandez’s best outing of the season.
The Tigers led 6-1 in the eighth before the Mariners scored three times in a rally that was snuffed when pinch hitter Roberto Petagine struck out with the bases loaded.
The Mariners, 7-13, have lost four straight games, seven of their past eight and were swept by the Tigers for the first time since 2000.
Opponents have scored first in six of the past seven losses. In four of the losses, the Mariners haven’t scored until the fifth inning or later, yet rallied and had the tying runs on base in the seventh, eighth or ninth innings in each game.
Theories anyone?
One is that the Mariners are making life too easy for opposing starters, not connecting with hittable pitches early in the ball-strike count and flailing wildly when they’re in a two-strike hole.
“When a team goes bad, the first thing you notice is they get a little wild and start swinging at balls that God can’t hit,” hitting coach Jeff Pentland said.
There’s the issue of focus, when there’s not the urgency to produce offensively early in a game like there is late when the other team has a lead.
“Sometimes early the guys aren’t focused as much, and with the game on the line it becomes more intense,” Pentland said. “I think we’ve shown the ability when the game is close and late, and our at-bats have gotten better. We’d like to keep that going for nine innings, but we haven’t done that.”
And there’s the obligatory tipping of the cap to opposing pitchers.
Sunday, the Tigers’ Justin Verlander threw a fastball that once hit 101 mph on the stadium speed board. He worked quickly and mixed the fastball with enough offspeed pitches to dominate the Mariners early.
“I’ll give pitchers credit where it’s due, but we have to control what we do,” Pentland said. “We’ve got to go up there smart. We can’t just go up there winging it.”
The Mariners didn’t have a hit until Yuniesky Betancourt looped a two-out single to left field in the fifth inning. That ended a string of 132/3 innings that the Mariners hadn’t gotten the ball into the outfield; both hits Saturday were infield singles.
Ichiro Suzuki followed with a single to center and Jose Lopez an RBI double to left, cutting the Tigers’ lead to 3-1. It was the Mariners’ first run since the ninth inning Friday.
By then, Hernandez had settled into his best stretch of pitching in any of his four starts.
Hernandez had allowed two runs in the first inning, both unearned after catcher Rene Rivera made a throwing error and committed one of his two passed balls in the game. He gave up the Tigers’ third run in the fifth when Vance Wilson and Curtis Granderson led off with back-to-back singles and Wilson scored on Omar Infante’s RBI ground out.
Hernandez lasted seven innings, allowing two hits and striking out a season-best nine.
“After the first inning, I was able to locate my fastball a little better and that helped,” Hernandez said.
Clint Nageotte, called up from Class AAA Tacoma before the game and sent back to the Rainiers afterward, worked one forgettable inning in between. He walked two in the eighth, then hung a slider that Craig Monroe turned into a three-run homer and a 6-1 Tigers lead.
The Mariners scored three of their own in the bottom of the eighth off Tigers reliever Joel Zumaya, including some hits of personal importance to Richie Sexson and Adrian Beltre.
Sexson’s double not only drove in Willie Bloomquist, it left him three doubles away from 200 in his career and four hits from 1,000.
Beltre drove in two runs with a single that was his second hit of the game and another sign that he’s easing his way out of an early hitting slump. He went 2-for-4 and is batting .186.
The Tigers followed Beltre’s single by walking the next two Mariners to load the bases. Roberto Petagine worked a full count against reliever Fernando Rodney, who struck him out with a chest-high 95 mph fastball to end the inning.
Tigers closer Todd Jones then rolled through the top of the Mariners’ order – Suzuki, Lopez and Ibanez – in the ninth as the Mariners ended the game the way they started it.
“If I knew how to fix it we could patent it and I could retire,” Hargrove said. “We have to pay attention to details. We’ve got a lot of young kids and we’ve got to help them build confidence in themselves as hitters. It’s a daily process.”
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