SEATTLE – In the last 10 days, the Mariners won seven of nine games, sweeping the mighty Yankees in New York and cooling off the hottest team in baseball, the Boston Red Sox.
They go into an off day with the second best record in baseball – 26-11 – and a 5 1/2-game lead in their division. Yet, for some reason, they don’t seem like a 26-11 team.
Am I cuckoo or what? Don’t answer that.
“We’ve played good baseball,” the injured relief pitcher Norm Charlton said before Sunday’s 10-4 loss to the Bosox, “but not as well as we can or we’re gonna.”
The M’s went into Sunday’s homestand finale with the third-best batting average – .282 – in the American League. Yet, the hitting has been inconsistent at times.
They were fifth in AL pitching. Yet, the starting rotation hasn’t been all that dynamite.
The defense was second in the league with only 20 errors. Yet, the M’s showed in Sunday’s game that they can be very human, committing three errors to contribute to four unearned runs.
With all that, they’re still only two games behind the record-breaking pace of last year’s team. So how’d they get to be 26-11?
They’re still a very good team. They still play as if every game is important. They still battle until the last man is out. They still have the smartest manager in the game working in their dugout.
And they still don’t seem like a team that is 15 games to the good.
I may not be able to explain that, but I do know this: They’re lucky they don’t face Pedro Martinez but about three times a year.
Pedro was up to his old tricks again Sunday. That is, dominating the M’s. He shut ‘em down for eight innings, allowing four hits and one run. That made him 9-0 lifetime against Seattle.
When someone said that he appears to have the M’s number, Martinez wasn’t quite sure what that meant.
Number, what number?
Then someone told him what it was.
He said he hoped it didn’t stay at nine. Rest assured, Pedro, it won’t. You do have their number.
He looked like the same guy who has stricken their bats before. “It’s probably the best I’ve felt so far,” he said. “I feel like I’m getting better every time I go out.”
Just what the M’s didn’t want to hear. They get him again Saturday in Fenway Park.
Limited to 18 starts last year because of an injury, Martinez has come back strong, starting the season 5-0.
You got a sense that it was going to be a long night for the M’s when he struck out the first four batters he faced. And it was – a very long night.
But look on the bright side. The M’s took two of three from the Red Sox, who came into Safeco Field with a nine-game winning streak and with the best record in the game. They left with a one-game streak and still the best record, 25-9.
Piniella packed his lineup with switch-hitters and left-handers and the M’s still couldn’t solve Martinez. But there are many teams that haven’t, if the M’s can take any solace from that.
Neither Jeff Cirillo nor Bret Boone – both right-handed hitters – got off the bench for the M’s. Not that it would have done any good if they had. Boone is 3-for-21 lifetime against Martinez. Cirillo has never faced him. Why start now?
Both struggled during the first month of the season and that may be one reason the M’s don’t seem as good as their record indicates. This time last year, Boone was batting .308. This season he’s at .261. Cirillo is a .311 lifetime hitter, but is hitting only .258 through the first 37 games.
Charlton feels as if both will come around. “I don’t think there’s any reason not to expect Boonie to have if not the same kind of year, then one that’s close (to last year),” he said.
Charlton is a little concerned about the loss of reliever Jeff Nelson (4-6 weeks), although he cited the fact that the “kids we’ve brought up so far have done a helluva job.”
But as he well knows, kids can look good in their initial outings because opposing batters haven’t faced them before. “I think you see that with guys who get called up in September,” he said. “They have great Septembers and the second and third time around the league, it’s a different story.”
It was a different story for both Justin Kaye and Julio Mateo in only their second appearance in the bigs. Unscored upon in their first outings, they yielded eight hits and five runs – four by Kaye – in 3 1/3innings.
The bus back to the minors is always idling outside the ballpark.
So is there anything to be concerned about with this team that doesn’t seem like a 26-11 ballclub?
Not yet.
But we may find something on the next road trip.
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