John Blanchette: Mariners have bad luck or bad decisions?

SEATTLE – Surely it’s not unique to the Seattle Mariners, but as desperate ballclubs go, these guys skip the silver linings and go straight for the gold.

Take this pronouncement from Miguel Batista, who scuffled his way through a solid start on Sunday afternoon, left with a groin injury of undetermined severity and then saw closer J.J. Putz punched around for a month’s worth of runs in a day in a 7-5 loss to the Detroit Tigers:

“We’re lot losing any more like we were,” Batista offered. “They have to beat us now.”

Isn’t that encouraging?

Of course, in this case, the Tigers were happy to oblige.

And now, if they didn’t have enough woes dogging them – disappointing starting pitching, poor situational hitting, erratic defense and occasionally brain-dead baserunning – the M’s had their lockdown guy get lit up Sunday.

Hey, it happens. Even the best closers can’t slam every door.

But there was something about Putz’s implosion in the ninth inning of a 3-3 game that made it seem to be more than a mere hiccup.

Starting with him being out there in the first place.

Yes, yes, it’s very much the fashion to send your closer out to pitch the top of the ninth of a tie game based on the notion that your guys will win it in the bottom half – and the Mariners did indeed have the heart of the order due up. It’s also true that such a thing will be accomplished maybe a third of the time, tops, and that you’ll wind up having to send one of your spear carriers out for a 10th inning, an 11th and so on.

Still, you don’t want to lose one of these and never get your big guy in the game. It’s an entire chapter in the, uh, unwritten rules.

“We’ve been using (Brandon) Morrow in the eighth and J.J. in the ninth,” said manager John McLaren, “and we’ve been going good during this streak as we’ve done that. Even in tie games, that’s the direction we’re going to go.”

Well, let’s get serious, skip – this was never a streak. The M’s had won three times in four games and, true, given the calamity of the previous week, that was a significant upturn. But so is a half-gainer into a vat of toxic waste after you’ve been swimming laps with a bloody nose in the shark tank.

Yet three-out-of-four was enough to marry McLaren to the hot-hand philosophy, so much so that he refused to pinch-hit Richie Sexson for Miguel Cairo when the M’s were down to their last out and down two runs with a runner on. Now, Cairo’s heat is relative, anyway – he’s been good for one hit every start. But who in that situation has even a prayer of tying the game with one swing?

And here’s a poser: why, exactly, does the sticking-with-what’s-working approach never seem to apply – and McLaren has plenty of managerial company on this – when the set-up reliever is throwing lights-out?

Morrow, the second-year righthander, has been sensational all year, but especially in May when most of his teammates were kibble – 10 innings, one earned run, 16 strikeouts. On Sunday, he blew away three batters on nine pitches; the last of them, Edgar Renteria, has yet to thaw out from the 99 mph fastball for strike three.

Any reason Morrow couldn’t have been sent out for an encore?

“That’s up to them,” he shrugged. “That’s our typical protocol – bringing J.J. in when it’s a tie game in the ninth. It’s just what we do. I kept my pitch count low again so we feel I can come back tomorrow if needed.”

Terrific. Except the M’s don’t need to win tomorrow. They need to win now.

Besides, isn’t Morrow destined to be a starter down the road? Would it be a bad thing to get that transition rolling by stretching him out – the way the Yankees are doing with Joba Chamberlain? Especially if McLaren and pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre aren’t convinced that Putz, who missed a month earlier this season due to injury, still isn’t back to his old 2006-07 self?

Which, apparently, they aren’t.

“We were just talking about it,” McLaren acknowledged. “His velocity is not quite as good. Maybe he’s still trying to get there. I think he hit maybe 95 (mph) today and last year he was at 97 and 98 at times.”

It wasn’t like the Tigers were using Putz to knock down the fences. Placido Polanco’s go-ahead RBI single was a flare down the right-field line, and a couple of other hard grounders just got by Cairo and Adrian Beltre.

“They weren’t terrible pitches,” said Putz. “That doesn’t make it any less frustrating.”

And just as damaging was the one-out walk Putz issued to Brandon Inge which started it all.

“Last year he wasn’t hurt or anything,” McLaren said. “He could dot an ‘I’ and everything else. He’s shown on occasion he’s there, but there’s times he’s not – and even as good as he is, it’s still about location.”

As it is with the Mariners, still in last place and now 121/2 games arrears of the Los Angeles Angels, who come to town today.

“You don’t get breaks when you’re not going well,” McLaren grumped.

Funny. Could have sworn this was a team on a streak.