M’s play another game of beat me in St. Louis
ST. LOUIS — With their already disastrous season seemingly on the brink of descending to new depths of frustration, the Seattle Mariners turned in another non-competitive effort on Saturday in losing, 8-1, to the St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Stadium.
The Cardinals showed their superiority in every aspect of a game that seemed to match teams from different planets, not just different leagues. Just one statistical snippet begins to tell the story: Seattle was 0 for 10 with runners in scoring position; St. Louis was 8 for 13.
The Mariners have now lost nine of 12 games since thinking they were inching back into the race following sweeps of Montreal and Pittsburgh.
“It’s hard to watch, what we’ve been doing,” said Mariners manager Bob Melvin. “It has been for awhile. It just gets frustrating for everyone involved. The pitchers feel they can’t give a lot up. The hitters grind because we’re behind in the game. It’s hard to keep watching the same things.”
Before the game, Melvin said the team wasn’t quite ready to turn the lineup over to prospects and look to the future.
“There comes a time when you have to start looking at kids,” he said. “I don’t know when that will be, but it’s not right now. I am trying to win every game I can, but you don’t just want to see the kids in September against other call-up kids. You want to see them against teams involved in pennant races.”
The Mariners, however, may need to do something to shake things up. Melvin said after the game that rookie Justin Leone, recently called up from Class AAA Tacoma, will start at shortstop today.
General manager Bill Bavasi declined after the game to address any possible changes. “Now’s not the time to answer any questions – when you come up with an emotional answer, instead of a smart one,” he said.
Besides Leone, the Mariners already have rookie Travis Blackley in their rotation and Matt Thornton and J.J. Putz in their bullpen. Clint Nageotte is back in Tacoma after a stint in the rotation. Other pitchers in Tacoma could warrant a look, along with position players such as newly acquired outfielder Jeremy Reed, shortstop Jose Lopez (currently out with a knee injury), outfielder Jamal Strong (also injured) and designated hitter/first baseman Bucky Jacobsen, hitting .321 with 24 home runs and 77 runs batted in.
Melvin said such changes “will be a group decision, an organizational decision, which is the way it should be. It’s not my decision when to bring guys up.”
Saturday, Melvin moved Bret Boone back to the No. 3 spot in the lineup for the first time since June 11. The move seemed to pay immediate dividends when Boone homered in the first off Jason Marquis, but that was to be the Mariners’ only run.
Meanwhile, the Cardinals pounded 13 hits, including two home runs off Seattle starter Ryan Franklin, who had given up four in his previous outing against Texas. The one that really got to Franklin was a towering drive down the line by Albert Pujols that drifted over the fence near the left-field foul pole.
“That’s a joke,” Franklin said. “That ball doesn’t go out in any park except maybe Fenway. He did what I wanted him to do, pop it up. That’s a pop fly.”
Franklin, who stayed in the game after an hour rain delay in the third inning, agreed with Melvin’s assessment of the mounting frustration.
“We’ve just been losing so much, it kind of affects everyone, the way everyone plays,” he said. “I hope there’s some way we can turn it around and have fun, because this is not fun.”
The Cardinals, meanwhile, are having plenty of fun. They have the best record in the National League at 48-32, and they’re baseball’s best interleague team at 10-1.