A’s cast spell on M’s again

SEATTLE – Is it too early to bring back Felix Hernandez already?

Wherever the Seattle Mariners are going this season, the growing consensus is that the starting rotation retooled by general manager Bill Bavasi will take them there.

On Wednesday night, it was into the loss column for the first time – the Oakland A’s tattooing new starter Miguel Batista in a 9-0 blitz to conclude the season’s opening series at Safeco Field.

Seattle still won two of the three-game set – notable and encouraging because it only won two of 19 games against the A’s a year ago. But the first outing of Batista, a 36-year-old free agent signed to a three-year contract that will pay him $6 million this season, was a stark contrast to the dominating performance Hernandez turned in on Opening Day.

Surely there have been worse debuts in Mariners history. Just none in memory.

“I just didn’t get my job done and that’s the reason we lost,” said Batista, a 12-year major league veteran. “I wish I could give you an excuse, but I can’t.”

Batista victimized himself in just about every way possible in a five-run Oakland second inning – base hits, balks, bases on balls and hit batsmen. When manager Mike Hargrove came to rescue him with two out in the fifth inning, Batista had surrendered 10 hits and eight earned runs – five of them driven home by Mark Ellis, the No. 9 hitter in the A’s order.

In the meantime, the M’s were enduring their usual hog-tying by Oakland starter Rich Harden.

The 25-year-old right-hander simply rules the Mariners in Safeco Field – he was 4-0 with a 1.03 earned run average in five previous starts here. This time he didn’t give up a hit until Ichiro Suzuki’s leadoff single in the fourth, and only three in seven innings.

“It’s the same thing he does against everybody – throw strikes,” Hargrove said. “He throws the ball 94 to 98 mph – he hit 99 once tonight – he’s got a nasty split-finger and he throws strikes with his split as well as he does with his fastball. A guy with that kind of stuff makes it a very difficult proposition – and he’s done that to other people, too.”

The Mariners got a runner to second base against Harden only twice – later in the fourth when Jose Vidro and Raul Ibanez put together a walk and a single after a double play erased Ichiro, and in the sixth when Jose Lopez singled and Ichiro walked, a rally shorted out by another double play.

Of course, Seattle didn’t fare any better against relievers Jay Marshall and Huston Street, who retired the M’s in order the final two innings.

Held in check by Hernandez and Jarrod Washburn in the first two games of the series, the A’s broke out after Batista worked a 1-2-3 first inning.

Designated hitter Mike Piazza rapped his first hit of the season on the first pitch of the second inning and Eric Chavez followed with a double down the right-field line.

Then Batista committed the first of his two balks to send home the first run, and loaded the bases by hitting Bobby Crosby with a 0-2 pitch and walking rookie Travis Buck. That set the stage for Ellis’ first big hit, a crusher over Ibanez’s head in left field that drove in three runs. Another double by Ellis drove in two more runs in the fifth.

“That’s a hell of a question – I wish I knew,” Batista said of the balks. “I haven’t made a balk in 19 years.”

Well, not quite. He had one against Houston in 2005 and four in his major league career.

“It looked like his ball was moving a lot,” said Hargrove, “especially in the early innings and he was having trouble keeping it on the plate. He had Crosby 0-2 and tried to throw a fastball in on him and it just took off. And he got a lot of pitches up, which he hadn’t done in spring training with a lot of regularity.”

The Mariners did get some reasonably decent relief from rookie Sean White, a Pullman native who made his major league debut and gave up a run in 3 2/3 innings.

But missing a chance to sweep the A’s for the first time since 2003 hurt.

“You can see these guys are determined to win,” Batista said. “Taking the first two games from this team was something that was very important to them.”

After a day off today, the Mariners go to Cleveland for a four-game series in which Bavasi’s other two acquisitions for the rotation, Horacio Ramirez and Jeff Weaver, will start.