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Seattle Mariners

Errors costly in Mariners’ loss to Red Sox

Langerhans’ mistake sticks out in ugly game

Geoff Baker Seattle Times

BOSTON — A swirling wind and a short wall near the left-field foul line were two of the excuses Ryan Langerhans could have used.

But the Mariners left fielder instead took all the blame himself for a pop fly that struck his glove, bounded off the wall then off his body into the crowd. The two-base error, which led to three unearned runs in a 6-3 loss to the Boston Red Sox on Monday night, was just one play of several the Mariners seemed to be a step or two behind.

“It’s a ball that I should have caught,” Langerhans said. “I just kind of gator-armed it a little bit. I don’t know if I took my eye off it. I haven’t had a chance to take a look at it (on video). But it’s a play that I probably make 99.9 times out of 100.”

It wasn’t the only non-play by the Mariners in front of 37,133 fans at Fenway Park as the team began the fourth and final leg of its longest trip this season. There were some seeing-eye grounders in a three-run Boston seventh inning that got by lunging second baseman Chone Figgins and shortstop Chris Woodward for singles that chased starter Doug Fister from the game.

“That’s what I was looking for there, a ground ball,” Fister said. “It’s unfortunate.”

Fister shrugged it off as just “baseball being baseball.”

Sean White served up the go-ahead, two-run single to Marco Scutaro, then a sacrifice fly by Victor Martinez put the game away. Red Sox starter John Lackey went eight innings, allowing the three runs – two earned – while striking out 10 in earning the victory.

It wasn’t the best-played game on a day rain pounded the field until less than an hour before the opening pitch.

Figgins collected three singles, while Casey Kotchman hit two of his own – including a tying two-run hit in the sixth – to continue their improved hitting of late. But the Mariners needed help to get their first run as second baseman Jed Lowrie booted a Figgins infield hit in the third and enabled Langerhans to score from second.

In the fifth, Lowrie hit a pop fly that had Langerhans charging for it near the foul line, the short wall just inches away.

Langerhans said the wall didn’t really play a factor and that he was “locked on to the ball” only to have it go off his glove. Scutaro collected two of his four runs batted in on the night moments later with a single to right.

But an error the following inning by Lackey on a grounder by Franklin Gutierrez helped Seattle load the bases with one out. Kotchman then tied it at 3 on a single that saw Gutierrez take third.

Once again, though, the Mariners couldn’t come through. Gutierrez broke for home on contact on an Adam Moore grounder to third, was caught in a rundown and tagged out.