Yanks Beat M’S To End Losing Streak Hard-Luck Belcher Has Very Little Offensive Support

Once he was a phenom, now he is a crafty veteran - Tim Belcher has survived most every label baseball can throw at a pitcher.

He has won with his best stuff and lost with his worst. On Sunday in the Kingdome, he was done in by a lethal combination: mediocre pitches put in the wrong location.

After the New York Yankees had pounded on him for 6-1/3 innings, piling up 11 hits and four runs en route to a 5-2 victory over the Seattle Mariners, Belcher’s analysis was succinct.

“They hit a few good pitches and a lot of bad ones,” he said.

In all, Belcher threw 129 pitches at Yankees hitters and was a bit amazed that only 11 of them were hit back at him. He didn’t have his best fastball. Or his best change. Or his sharp breaking pitch.

“I didn’t have much of anything,” Belcher said. “I didn’t have a strikeout pitch to go to when I got into trouble.”

So the Yankees pounded on him, inning after inning - only to realize that when Belcher left in the seventh inning with couple of runners on base, they had only three runs.

“Tim gave us what he had,” manager Lou Piniella said. “It wasn’t like we were giving him a lot of runs to work with.”

Try zero.

A 2-1 loser earlier in the week, Belcher didn’t even get one run on Sunday, when the Yankees snapped an eight-game losing streak and the Mariners failed to produce any of the magic that had allowed them to win their last three games.

“We don’t score many runs for him,” Piniella said, “but he gives you innings, he keeps you in games, and he doesn’t blame anybody when he loses.”

In what was the quiet end to what had been a spectacular four-game series, the Mariners offense was stymied on two hits through the first seven innings. The only threats they’d produced in that stretch was when Joey Cora doubled with one out in the first inning and when Kamieniecki inexplicably walked the bases loaded with two outs in the fourth inning.

“If we score when we had the chance early, it might have been different,” Piniella said.

Instead, the Mariners only runs came in the eighth inning, when Edgar Martinez grounded out - producing his 95th RBI and Jay Buhner singled for his 84th RBI of the season.