Rookie amazing again
SEATTLE – The Kansas City Royals lost their club-record 16th consecutive game Monday night, managing only three hits and one run in eight innings against 19-year-old Seattle rookie Felix Hernandez in an 11-3 loss to the Mariners.
The Royals, winless since July 27 when they beat the Chicago White Sox 6-5 in 13 innings, have the longest losing streak in the major leagues since the Chicago Cubs lost 16 straight in 1996-97. The Cubs lost the final two games of the 1996 season and the first 14 in 1997.
The 1988 Baltimore Orioles are the only American League team to have a longer skid in the last 30 years, losing a league-record 21 in a row at the start of the season.
Bench coach Bob Schaefer directed the Royals in place of manager Buddy Bell, who was in Virginia to attend services at Arlington National Cemetery for his nephew, a Marine killed in Iraq. Lance Cpl. Tim Bell Jr. was killed by a roadside bomb this month.
Mike Morse, Richie Sexson and Ichiro Suzuki hit two-run homers to help the Mariners snap a four-game losing streak.
Hernandez (2-1), making his third major league start since being called up from Triple-A Tacoma on Aug. 4, lowered his ERA to 0.86 – two earned runs in 21 innings.
He had a career-high 11 strikeouts and walked one, baffling the Royals with a 98 mph fastball, a devastating curveball and a changeup.
Hernandez lost his shutout bid in the seventh when Mike Sweeney and Eric Brown opened with singles, and Sweeney scored on Angel Berroa’s fielder’s choice.
Berroa singled in the second for Kansas City’s other hit off Hernandez.
Morse, also a rookie, gave the Mariners a 2-0 lead in the second with his homer off Runelvys Hernandez (8-11). Morse broke out of an 0-for-15 slump in his first start at shortstop in a week.
The Mariners made it 5-0 in the fifth on Willie Bloomquist’s two-run triple and Raul Ibanez’s RBI single. Yorvit Torrealba singled in Seattle’s sixth run in the sixth.
Sexson made it 8-1 with a 416-foot opposite-field home run to right in the seventh, his 29th homer of the season. Sexson hit 45 homers for Milwaukee in 2003 and 2001, 31 for Cleveland in 1999 and 29 for Milwaukee in 2002.
Ichiro hit his 11th homer in the eighth.
Runelvys Hernandez pitched six innings and gave up six runs on eight hits and two walks, with five strikeouts.
No tat
Bobby Madritsch wasn’t bashful enough to keep from having his body decorated with 27 tattoos over the years, but there are some things he won’t do.
Going topless for a crowd of about 400 is one of them.
Madritsch had planned to get a tattoo on his back Sunday at the Seattle Tattoo Convention.
When he showed up at the booth of a friend who is a tattoo artist, he told Madritsch to come back in 10 minutes.
“When I got back, there were 400 people standing there waiting for me,” Madritsch said. “I’m not taking my shirt off for all those people.”
He planned to get the tattoo after Monday night’s game, at more private location.
Notes
Mike Morse started at shortstop Monday, a day after manager Mike Hargrove said Yuniesky Betancourt would get most of the starts there. Hargrove also said the Mariners haven’t decided whether Morse will play left field, where he has fielded balls in afternoon workouts. “It’s not a foregone conclusion, but if we decide to do it, it will probably be another five or six days,” Hargrove said. … Adrian Beltre was the Mariners’ DH Monday “just to get him off his feet for a day,” Hargrove said. … Pitcher Rafael Soriano, will continue his minor league rehab tonight by pitching one inning for the Tacoma Rainiers. He also is scheduled for one inning Thursday and two innings Sunday for the Rainiers. … PGA Champions Tour golf pros Andy Bean and Allen Doyle, former Seahawk Jacob Green and Boeing president and CEO Alan Mulally will compete in a closest-to-the-pin contest before today’s game, chipping balls about 100 yards to a pin in center field. Mariners pitcher Gil Meche was scheduled to compete but said Monday that he had pulled out.