Johnson A Bit Sore; K.C. Sorer Johnson Returns With Seven Shutout Innings

The scoring machine broke down for the first time in eight games Friday, so the Seattle Mariners rolled out the pitcher least likely to need many runs - The Big Unit.

Randy Johnson, recuperating from a tight shoulder, limited to 100 pitches and working for the first time in 10 days, was up to it.

After averaging 10.7 runs a game for a week, Seattle scored two against Kansas City - and Johnson made them look like 10 in a 2-1 victory that was the Mariners’ sixth in a row and placed them squarely on top of the American League wild-card standings.

“You know he’s good, but on 10 days rest you don’t expect the kind of command he had tonight,” Royals manager Bob Boone said. “He didn’t walk anybody. He didn’t come close to walking anybody.”

“What did he strike out, 11?” manager Lou Piniella asked. “We knew he was OK or we wouldn’t have sent him out there, but it wouldn’t have been fair to expect seven shutout innings.”

Sidelined since Aug. 1 with tendinitis in his left shoulder, Johnson had watched from the dugout while his teammates began blowing the opposition away. Friday, he made it clear he wanted in on the fun.

“This team is convinced it’s playing for something, that every game means something,” Johnson said. “There’s a long way to go, but we realize the wild card is there to be had.”

Matched against Mark Gubicza in a park where he’d never won, Johnson proved early on he was healthy again - striking out eight in the first five innings and allowing just three singles in seven innings.

“He was his old self,” catcher Dan Wilson said.

The radar gun agreed - it caught Johnson’s fastball at 99 mph twice.

“You do see some funny swings up there in his games,” Wilson said. “If they’re sitting on the fastball and he throws that slider, guys don’t know what to do until it’s too late. They start to swing, they try to hold up, they chase it. Randy didn’t make many mistakes.”

Neither did Gubicza, but one of them was hitting Edgar Martinez with a pitch to start the fourth inning. Cleanup hitter Tino Martinez then hit a fastball off the fence in center field, putting the Mariners ahead, 1-0, and extending his hitting streak to a career-high 14 consecutive games.

Two innings later, The Edgar doubled, took third on a ground ball by The Tino, then trotted home on Jay Buhner’s sacrifice fly.

On Johnson’s 100th pitch of the night, he struck out Greg Gagne to end the Royals seventh inning. Having recorded the first 21 outs, he handed a 2-0 lead to his bullpen and asked it to get the last six outs.

Norm Charlton worked the eighth inning, gave up a pair of hits - one a 40-foot infield single - and had one run score against him in a wild pitch.

Bobby Ayala, a closer whose earned-run average had ballooned past 4.10 last week, got the call in the ninth inning and set down the three hitters Kansas City sent to the plate.

“It was nice to win a 2-1 game,” Piniella said. “We haven’t seen one in awhile.”

Seattle has won 10 games this season when scoring three runs or less - they’ve lost 22 games under the same circumstances - and Johnson has six of those victories.