M’s pitching woes continue
SEATTLE – If all that troubled the Seattle Mariners were the untimely home runs they’re allowing, they’d be satisfied right now.
There’s more to worry about than homers and losses, which continued to pile up Sunday when the Texas Rangers beat the Mariners 7-6 at Safeco Field on David Dellucci’s two-run game-winner in the seventh inning.
The Mariners’ pitching staff, besides being hammered, is hurting.
Gil Meche lasted just 3 2/3 innings, giving up five runs in the fourth inning and coming out of the game with stiffness near his right elbow.
The Mariners are calling it inflammation, which Meche first felt late in spring training. It caused him to stiffen up during his first start of the season last week and, after Sunday’s recurrence, he had an X-ray that didn’t reveal any bone spurs.
The Mariners have given him a dose of anti-inflammatory medication and hope that’s all he needs.
“It’s in the back of the elbow and it’s in a fairly common area,” pitching coach Bryan Price said. “Everyone’s going to go through the aches and pains, but it seems early in the year to be battling through chronic stiffness in the elbow.”
The Mariners already have starters Bobby Madritsch and Joel Pineiro on the disabled list and, although Meche’s ailment doesn’t seem that serious, it’s almost certain to alter the team’s pitching plans in the coming days.
Pineiro is expected to come off the disabled list this week and pitch Friday or Saturday at Chicago. Madritsch went on the DL last week because of a shoulder problem, and a test Saturday revealed he has a torn ligament in his shoulder and could miss significant time.
Price said the Mariners may use the off day Tuesday to tweak the starting rotation and give Meche an extra day or two between starts.
Meche said it’s something that has flared up unexpectedly.
“It’s weird. After my last start, I threw a bullpen two days later and I felt like I was throwing 100 miles an hour,” he said. “I felt fine, no problems, 60 pitches in the pen with nothing. It’s annoying. Today was one of those days it didn’t let me get loose.”
The stiffness Sunday robbed Meche of his usual mid-90 mph velocity on his fastball, and it cost him dearly the longer he pitched with it.
“When it starts to come on, it affects everything,” he said. “It’s not going to let you be free and easy and you start to do things mechanically that you wouldn’t do when you feel great.”
The Rangers rocked Meche for five runs and four hits in the fourth inning, including a two-run single by Michael Young that ended Meche’s day.
“He never looked like he had his best stuff, and that’s when he’s a little bit vulnerable because he tries to make up for it with effort,” Price said. “He didn’t have the ability today to make the big pitch and avoid that five-run inning.”
The Mariners’ offense bailed Meche out, though, by scoring three runs in the bottom of the fourth and three in the fifth.
Richie Sexson’s two-run double in the fifth gave the Mariners a 7-5 lead, although it was his RBI double in the fourth that drew the most scrutiny.
With Jeremy Reed and Adrian Beltre on base, Sexson hit an opposite-field drive that seemed to have cleared both the right-field wall and the glove of Rangers right fielder Richard Hidalgo.
The ball bounced back into play, however, and umpires ruled that Hidalgo got enough of his glove on it to knock it back onto the field. TV replays showed otherwise, that the ball hit the glove of a fan in the first row, then Hidalgo’s glove before it came back onto the field.
Sexson wound up scoring later in the inning to make the play insignificant, but he did have advice for the fan.
“Catch it next time,” he said.
The M’s continued to tag Rangers starter Ryan Drese in the fifth when Jeremy Reed drove in a run with an infield hit and Sexson pounded a two-run double to the gap in right center.
That gave the Mariners a 6-5 lead and set up left-hander Matt Thornton for some much-needed retribution after he’d lost a lead against the Twins last Wednesday.
Thornton relieved Meche and had pitched strongly for 1 2/3 innings, mastering the control of his fastball that he didn’t have last week.
Then Thornton gave up a leadoff double to Mark Teixeira in the seventh, got Hidalgo to pop out, but left a pitch over the plate to Delluci, who crushed it 416 feet into the seats in right.
It was the third two-run homer the Rangers hit in as many days.