Dae-Ho Lee helps Mariners set baseball history in win over Texas

SEATTLE – On a Friday night that offered the lure of postgame fireworks, Dae-Ho Lee helped the Mariners carve a niche into baseball history by hitting two homers in a 7-5 victory over the Texas Rangers.

The Mariners are the first club in major-league history to get two homers from different players in four successive games in the same season.

Lee’s first homer was a solo shot that opened the scoring in the second inning. His second was a three-run bomb in the fourth inning after the Rangers pulled even on an Ian Desmond shot.

Kyle Seager followed Lee’s second blast with another homer – all three came against Texas starter Derek Holland – but it was Lee’s second homer that produced the record.

It’s rare enough for a club to get multiple homers from players in four straight games. The Chicago Cubs did it in 1998, and the Cleveland Indians did it in 2000.

But each time, at least one player did it twice. Sammy Sosa had two multihomer games for the Cubs. Jim Thome and Manny Ramirez alternated two-homer games for the Indians.

The Mariners got two-homer games from four players: Nelson Cruz on Tuesday; Chris Iannetta on Wednesday and Robinson Cano on Thursday before Lee’s second career two-homer game.

Major League Baseball generally restricts consecutive-game records to the same season. If you want to stretch the point, the 1985-86 Detroit Tigers did it: two games at the end of one year, and two games at the start of another.

And in the Tigers’ case, it was four players.

By any measure … pretty rare.

Lee’s two homers backed a strong outing from Hisashi Iwakuma, who won his rematch against Holland. The two hooked up last Sunday at Texas, when the Rangers scored two unearned runs in a 3-1 victory.

It didn’t come easily.

Iwakuma (5-5) carried a 5-1 lead into the seventh inning and had retired 10 in a row before yielding homers to Ryan Rua and Mitch Moreland.

Nick Vincent inherited a 5-3 lead to start the eighth but quickly ran into trouble. Jurickson Profar led off with a single off Lee’s glove at first. Profar scored on Ian Desmond’s double into the right-center gap.

The lead was down to one, but Vincent retired the next two hitters before the Mariners went to closer Steve Cishek for a four-out save. Cishek got the game to the ninth by retiring Rua on a fly to right.

The Mariners answered with two gift runs in their eighth.

The rally started when Cruz reached on a wild pitch from Shawn Tolleson after a swinging third strike.

Cruz moved to second on a grounder, which prompted an intentional walk to Seager before Iannetta grounded a single through the left side. Cruz initially held at third but scored on Rua’s wild throw to the plate.

Seager moved to third on the error and scored on Seth Smith’s sacrifice fly to center. That proved Cishek with a three-run cushion, and he secured his 14th save in 17 chances.

The victory pulled the Mariners to within three games of first-place Texas.

Holland (5-5) gave up five runs and five hits in five innings.

Lee’s first homer came when he drove a full-count sinker over the left-center wall with one out int the second inning. Texas answered with two outs in the third when Ian Desmond crushed a no-doubter to left.

Nomar Mazara followed with a line double into the right-field corner, but Iwakuma escaped further damage when Rougned Odor grounded to first.

Cano started the four-run fourth with a walk and went to second on Cruz’s single to right. Lee and Seager followed with homers for a 5-1 lead.