M’s ship is still sinking
SEATTLE – Major league RBIs leader Josh Hamilton, Michael Young and David Murphy drove in three runs each to support stingy starter Sidney Ponson in the Texas Rangers’ 10-1 victory over the sinking Seattle Mariners on Tuesday night.
Seattle lost for the sixth time in seven games before the smallest crowd in Safeco Field history to move back into a last-place tie in the A.L. West. Mariners hitters continued their mostly punchless season with just seven harmless hits in seven innings off Ponson (2-0), who worked quickly and at times effortlessly. He struck out two and walked one.
The Rangers scored 10 runs in three innings on just six hits and seven walks. Seattle starter Miguel Batista (2-4) and Cha Seung Baek walked 10 in all.
One night after a win sparked Mariners talk of merely getting back to .500, Seattle played like its listless, humiliated predecessors of the 1980s.
The bad vibe in Seattle is spreading beyond the clubhouse. Just 15,818 showed up on a 53-degree night. That was one night after the third-smallest home crowd inside 9-year-old Safeco Field, which welcomed an average of more than 36,000 per game as recently as 2004.
Seven of the 10 smallest crowds in stadium history have come this year.
The few saw Texas win for the fifth time in seven games since talk of firing manager Ron Washington got hot.
Signed to a minor league contract in March, Ponson has allowed one run in each of his three starts (a 1.33 ERA) since his recall from Triple-A Oklahoma last month.
Hamilton, who took a game off Monday for the first time this season, hit a three-run homer off Baek into the second deck to make it 10-0. That gave him 36 RBIs and was the final blow of a seven-run third, the Rangers’ most productive inning of the season.
Seattle finally scored in the fifth, on consecutive doubles by Wladimir Balentien and Ichiro Suzuki.
After Ian Kinsler led off the game with a double, Batista (2-4) walked Young, Hamilton, Brandon Boggs and Frank Catalanotto. Milton Bradley sprinkled in an RBI groundout and Murphy hit a sacrifice fly among those walks. Batista somehow escaped his 44-pitch inning down only 2-0.
In the second, Ramon Vasquez doubled, moved to third on Kinsler’s sacrifice and scored on a sacrifice fly by Young.
Batista went to full counts on seven of his first 13 batters then walked Bradley in the third. Murphy then hit a laserlike home run to make it 5-0. When Batista issued his sixth walk, to Catalanotto, he was gone. The tiny crowd booed as loud as it could.
Batista allowed five runs on three hits and walked six in his 21/3 innings.
Washburn feels better
Pitcher Jarrod Washburn, who left Monday night’s game in the seventh inning because of stiffness in his right calf, said he expects to make his next start Saturday.
“It feels good, (but) it’s not 100 percent,” Washburn said. “I don’t foresee missing a start.”
He suffered a similar injury two years ago, when he missed the final 10 days of the season, and says this one isn’t as bad.
“They’re hoping that it’s just scar tissue that just broke from that spot,” said Washburn, who may skip his usual between-starts bullpen session in order to let it heal.
“I might just skip that to not aggravate it. I’ll give it a few extra days rest without tweaking it.”
If Washburn can’t make his start Saturday against the Chicago White Sox, right-hander Cha Seung Baek is his likely replacement.