Indians Leave M’S Baffled Seattle Now Seeks Walk On Wild Side
They both wanted a great homestand, and neither of them got it. That didn’t mean Tino Martinez and Lou Piniella looked at the past week the same way.
Losing to the Cleveland Indians 5-2, the Seattle Mariners concluded a seven-game stretch in the Kingdome Sunday with a 3-4 record - one game under .500 and a distant 11 games behind the front-running California Angels in the American League West.
Tino was disappointed, in himself and his team.
Piniella, a veteran of pennant races and such, was not happy with the Mariners’ record - but wise enough to lean on an old axiom, slightly twisted.
That which does not kill you … keeps you alive in the hunt for the first post-season appearance in franchise history.
“I’m not disappointed,” Piniella said. “We played well, we went head-to-head with the best team in baseball and split the season series. If we can get through the toughest part of our schedule and still be in this thing …”
“This thing,” the Mariners made clear Sunday, is not the A.L. West race. It is the chase for a wild-card spot. Even Tino hinted as much.
“This wasn’t a very good homestand,” he said, “but we got lucky in one way. Texas has really struggled, too. We started today tied with the Rangers for the wild-card spot. If they’d been hot, they could have pulled away from us.
“Right now, we’re playing well as a team and there’s no reason we can’t go into Anaheim and take two of three games.”
They will get the chance come Tuesday.
What could have been an August showdown between division rivals will instead be a different kind of series - one in which the Angels seek to maintain a double-figures advantage and the Mariners attempt to make up ground for the wild-card spot.
“Right now, there are a handful of teams at or around .500 competing for that spot,” Piniella said. “I don’t expect them all to stay there. Someone is going to get hot and run off some wins. Hopefully, that’ll be us.”
Like every manager who enters the month of August without having been eliminated, Piniella still harbors hopes. For the Mariners, however, making up ground on anyone - or getting above .500 - has been no easy proposition.
Since July 7, a stretch of 21 games, the Mariners have been unable to win more than two consecutive games. That kind of nonstreak baseball keeps a team running in place.
Against the Indians on Sunday, Salomon Torres was brought back on three days’ rest instead of his customary four to give Randy Johnson another few days to ease the tightness in his left elbow. For the third start in a row, Torres pitched just well enough to lose.
“We haven’t given him much run support,” Piniella said. “And the one thing he lacks - experience - is an ingredient he’s getting now.”
Torres hurt himself with a ragged first inning in which he walked two men, one of them with the bases loaded, and threw low to second base on a potential double play ball. For all that, he emerged trailing just 1-0.
He walked No. 9 hitter Tony Pena in the second, watched him work his way around to score, then settled into a smoother rhythm.
Jay Buhner’s solo home run, his 17th of the year, cut the lead to 2-1, and Torres held it there into the fifth inning. After walking another leadoff hitter, the 23-year-old righthander retired two Indians to bring up Manny Ramirez.
“I tried to get ahead of him with a first-pitch slider for a strike,” Torres said. “It was a nothing slider and it was like he was waiting for it. Same old thing - the long ball.”
Ramirez’s 24th home run made it 4-1 and was the 11th Torres has allowed in his 11 starts for Seattle.
From there, the best the Mariners could do was trade solo homers with Cleveland - with Paul Sorrento’s off-setting one by Mike Blowers.
Would Piniella rather have seen the 5-2 record this week that Tino had said Seattle needed? No doubt, but with two months left to the season he knows what happens in the next few weeks is more important to the Mariners than what has just transpired.
“We’re still in this thing,” Piniella said.