Bad first inning undoes Meche

SEATTLE – Gil Meche felt so good in the bullpen, he figured Friday might be the night he turned around his wicked start to the season.

“You have a feeling out there,” Meche said. “You’re loose, you’ve got it going, you feel focused.”

Then that feeling disappeared when Meche needed it most.

The Cleveland Indians rolled him for five runs in the first inning of a 6-1 victory over the Seattle Mariners at Safeco Field.

It continued Meche’s mysterious beginning to the season, when he has allowed runs in just four of the 19 2/3 innings he has pitched but, because all of them were multi-run bursts, he has a 1-1 record and a 6.86 earned run average.

“You get out there on the mound, and the next thing you know you’ve got a first-pitch base hit, next-pitch bunt,” Meche said.

Then, to finish that thought, the Indians jumped all over him.

Meche, fighting a fastball that he couldn’t keep low in the strike zone, gave up five of the seven hits the Indians got off him. The biggest was Ronnie Belliard’s three-run home run that gave the Indians a 5-0 lead.

“That first inning, everything he threw was up in the zone,” manager Mike Hargrove said. “You can’t pitch to good hitters up in the zone consistently without getting hurt. They didn’t hit a ball easy the first inning. Everything they hit was a rocket.”

Coco Crisp led off the game with a single and Alex Cora reached safely when he bunted toward third base and Meche collided with third baseman Adrian Beltre as they tried to field the ball.

Meche got Victor Martinez to fly out, but Travis Hafner drove in Crisp with a single and Casey Blake scored Cora with a single. After Ben Broussard hit a long fly to left field for the second out, Meche fell behind in the count to Belliard. On a two-ball, no-strike pitch, Meche threw a high fastball and Belliard drove it the opposite way into the right field seats.

Just as quickly as Meche lost his touch, he got it back. He pitched four scoreless innings and allowed just two more hits through the fifth.

“It was a great eight-inning game,” pitching coach Bryan Price said. “Unfortunately we had to play the first inning.”

The good news for Meche is that his right elbow, which had bothered him in his early starts, feels good. His fastball topped at 98 mph late in his time on the mound.

The bad news is that the early problems drove up his pitch count and he was finished after five innings. He has made it past five only once in his four starts.