M’S Should Be Glad It’S The A’S Pursuing Them

Ready to try out slogans for the Seattle Mariners’ pennant run?

Here’s one: Freddy the Chief, and four days of long relief.

Perhaps this: At least Junior’s somebody else’s headache now.

Or maybe the direct approach: Mix in an RBI, why doncha?

In the blocks for the sprint to October, the Mariners can use good wishes of all kinds - the hopeful, the abstract, even the caustic. Not that we can be certain any of them will be heard over the incessant warning beep of this rig in reverse, but there’s always the chance the vibe alone will make a difference.

Rare is the baseball team that can offer up good feelings and frustration in such equal doses as do these Mariners, unless perhaps it’s the outfit a thousand miles to the south. Each time opportunity knocks for the Oakland A’s, they refuse to come to the door, apparently thinking it to be a Jehovah’s Witness.

Oh, well. Somebody has to win the American League West. Might as well be Seattle.

Still, losing 4-2 snoozers to the likes of the Minnesota Twins as the M’s did Friday night at Safeco Field is not exactly taking the route scoped out on their dashboard GPS.

Yes, despite losing for the 18th time in 25 games - that’s winning at a 28 percent clip, folks - they remained two games atop the standings, a climb that might as well be K-2 for second-place Oakland. Ralph Nader closes ground in the polls faster than the A’s.

But the Mariners’ own inability to carpe this diem is turning what needs to be a September statement into something sort of pitiful - the spent middleweight who won the first 10 rounds on points trying to clinch his way through the last two.

And against a tomato can like Minnesota, no less.

Sorry. If they aren’t easy pickings, the Twins are certainly easy targets, the men’s room splash mat of the A.L. Making a drastic error in judgment Friday, we turned on the local radio to hear a paid professional declare the visitors to be “arguably, one of the worst teams in major league history.” Hmm. Rather than waiting for the six teams with winning percentages lower than Minnesota’s this season to call in with rebuttals, we lunged for the FM dial.

Today’s topic: Sports talk radio is one of the worst ideas in communications history. Arguably.

In any case, there is no argument that the M’s must make some hay against not only the Twins, but the next three teams on the schedule - the Royals, Orioles and Devil Rays - who are also several fathoms below .500, before the hell week finish against West rivals Oakland, Anaheim and Texas.

And yet there was Twins rookie righthander Matt Kinney, stifling the M’s on six hits through six innings, winning his first major league game. There was rookie catcher A.J. Pierzynski, stroking his first big-league homer to straightaway center after Seattle had closed the deficit to 3-2.

There was Bob Wells - remember him? - blowing it by his old teammates in two innings of stunning relief. He made Edgar Martinez look so ridiculous on a changeup away that the ultimate DH might still be hacking away in the indoor batting cage trying to fix it.“The thing is, there’s no magic potion to winning every day,” said M’s center fielder Mike Cameron. “We just have to find a way to deliver.”

There is an undercurrent in the clubhouse that the delivery most overdue is from the batting order. Though they were 4-3 on their just-concluded road trip, the Mariners hit just .235 - and in their last nine games, they’re hitting .167 with runners in scoring position.

“We need to start swinging the bats with more consistency,” admitted manager Lou Piniella. “There isn’t anything we can change. We’re going with the same people who got us here, but we just didn’t swing the bats tonight and we really haven’t hit it well for a couple of weeks now.”

And before that, the M’s had misplaced their pitching and some of their defense, as well. One of the excuses for this extended funk was visited upon the schedule - that since July 23, the M’s had played nothing but teams above the .500 mark, though it was conveniently overlooked that Seattle had personally escorted Detroit over that line.

Sure, it was otherwise true. But just who do you suppose the M’s might be playing if they survive the cut for the playoffs?

The M’s have been, for most of the season, one of those teams - reaching a franchise record 22 games above .500 exactly one month ago. They had shed their old three-run-homer skin and tried on the new disguise of a pitching/defense/do-the-little-things team, and it was making converts in a way that even the ‘95 miracle makers never did.

Now they’re 26-29 since the All-Star break, and searching for answers.

“We did that stuff for four months,” said pitcher Paul Abbott, who nearly threw a no-hitter his last time out but was never in command this night. “Then we hit a little valley. I think we showed signs of coming out of it this last road trip, but the bottom line is we’re a much better team than we’ve shown.”

Not exactly the slogan we’ve been looking for.