Torres’ Two-Hitter Sweeps Twins
Five and a half months into the season, the Seattle Mariners have boiled it down to this - a four-game test to determine if there’s still a pennant race in the American League West.
“By Thursday night, we’ll know,” manager Lou Piniella said.
And so will the Texas Rangers.
The first shutout of Salomon Torres’ major league career, a complete-game two-hitter that beat the Minnesota Twins, 7-0, completed the improbable preliminaries Sunday.
Five days ago, Seattle trailed Texas by nine games.
One four-game winning streak later, the Mariners open the Kingdome to their biggest series of the year - an all-or-nothing shot at pulling off their second impossible dream season in as many years.
“We could have done more on this trip, we could be closer,” closer Norm Charlton said. “But we’ve put ourselves in the same position we were in last season. We’ve got nothing to lose, so let’s pour it on and see what happens.”
“It’s that time of year you don’t want to ask yourself questions after a game,” Ken Griffey Jr. said. “You don’t want to say ‘I shoulda dove for that ball.’ You gotta dive. That’s where we are. We bring it to the park every day and leave it on that field.”
The Rangers may not fear the Mariners but they have enough reasons to be nervous. Seattle leads the season series with Texas, 6-3, and has won 16 of the past 19 games the two teams have played in the Kingdome.
“We know what we’ve got to do,” Piniella said. “A split does us no good. We’ve got to get three of these games - and all four would be better.”
Five days ago, with the Mariners sitting nine games out in the A.L. West, it was newcomer Mark Whiten who shrugged and made it sound easy. Win the next four games, he said, and then pound Texas.
On Sunday, Whiten was beaming, and not just because he’d added another home run to his 26-game Mariners career.
“You’re talking about two good teams facing off,” he said of the Rangers series. “We can say this, they can say that. Until we play the games, it’s only ink. We got to make it real.”
Whatever happens in the next four days, the Mariners’ tuneup in Minneapolis made hope possible. Seattle had never swept the Twins in Minnesota - until now.
Then Torres made the 43rd start of his major league career his best one, delaying Paul Molitor’s drive to 3,000 career hits - Molitor went 0-for-3 and stayed at 2,998.
“I was 100 percent into this game,” Torres said. “It’s embarrassing how much I’ve struggled the last few years. I started my game plan against these hitters two days ago, and I checked with Jamie Moyer and a few others to see if it was a good one.”
Torres held up a clipboard and the legal pad it held, pointing to the notes he’d written on every hitter in the Twins lineup - and how he proposed to pitch to each.
The result was Seattle’s fourth complete game and third shutout this season. Torres now has a 2-2 record this season, 10-24 in his big-league career.
“Just an impressive job of pitching,” Piniella called it. “Salomon has been coming along, and today he had command of all his pitches and an idea what he wanted to do.”
For all that, after three innings he was in a scoreless game. Griffey changed that with his 45th home run, a two-run, opposite-field shot in the fourth that seemed to loose the cannons.
Whiten added his 10th home run in the sixth inning - his 20th of the season spread across two leagues and three teams - and Jay Buhner ended an eight-game homerless streak with his 40th of the season.
“What’s happened the last four games?” Piniella said, repeating a question. “We reached our last line of defense and we responded. I haven’t had to say anything, these guys know the situation. We went through it last year.”
Ah, that. A year ago the Mariners’ first division championship came down to a one-game playoff. Today, they trail Baltimore in the wild-card race by four games and sit six games in back of Texas in the A.L. West.
“This isn’t a team that panics,” Charlton said. “We got to this series with Texas with a chance, and that’s all you can ask.”