Rangers hold off M’s

ARLINGTON, Texas – The Seattle Mariners have committed to their kids, which means living with what manager Mike Hargrove calls “growing pains.”

The pain was there Tuesday, when the Mariners rallied and fell short in their 6-4 loss to Texas. Whether the Seattle rookies learn from it remains to be seen. The Mariners had point-blank opportunity to seize this game and – hold on, now – make a bid to overtake the third-place Rangers.

“You get a run in, runners at second and third base and no one out, you think you’re going to push home that tying run,” Adrian Beltre said of the Mariners’ best late shot at the Rangers.

“We just didn’t get it done.”

Down by two runs in the eighth inning, Raul Ibanez doubled, Richie Sexson walked and Beltre doubled home a run. Due up next: three rookies.

“You score there, you take the momentum, and you might take the lead,” Hargrove said. “When you play the young guys, good things can happen. So can bad. You have to allow them to see pitchers they’ve never seen.”

The Rangers brought in lefty Brian Shouse to face center fielder Jeremy Reed.

Needing a fly ball to tie the game, Reed tapped back to the mound for the first out.

With the lefty on the mound, Hargrove pinch hit rookie Mike Morse for rookie Greg Dobbs. The Rangers countered with closer Francisco Cordero.

“I think I saw him once at home,” Morse said.

Cordero got ahead in the count, then struck Morse out with a 97 mph fastball.

That brought up rookie Yuniesky Betancourt, who fouled a ball off the plate that bounced up and hit him in the nose – making both eyes water. He got back into the batters box and was called out on strikes.

In their half of the eighth, the Rangers pushed home an unearned run to go back up by two.

“I think our offense has progressed since the All-Star break, but games like this are a two-edged sword,” Hargrove said. “Yes, you have to score when you get those chances – but you also have to stop the other team.

“We didn’t do enough of either.”

Jamie Moyer just did get five innings in, throwing 102 pitches and laboring with his command. When he departed, Seattle was down 4-1.

“I just wasn’t sharp,” Moyer admitted. “I made some pitches when I had to, but not enough of them. When you don’t have it out there, you still have to try to pitch and hope it comes around.”

Had the Seattle bullpen held Texas there, who knows.

It didn’t – and third place is now five games away for the Mariners.

Julio Mateo gave up a solo home run. Jeff Nelson was charged with an unearned run. The Mariners kept coming, but they never caught up.

They did, however, have a brief lead. Two pitches into the game, Ichiro Suzuki hit his 12th home run.

Moyer struggled and the lead fell away. The question the Mariners had to ask afterward – and could not answer – was whether the experience of Tuesday’s game helped any of those young hitters.

Dobbs had an RBI double and scored a run in three at-bats.

Reed had an infield single and a stolen base, Betancourt a single.

But in the inning that might have changed the game? Nothing.

“What do I take away from that at-bat?” asked Morse. “Nothing. I struck out.”

Hargrove disagreed.

“The next time they see Cordero, they’ll have something to expect,” he said. “Until you’ve faced a pitcher, especially a good one, you can watch all the video you want and not really know what it’s like at the plate.

“Now, they’ve seen him. They’re all learning at the same time.”

They are part of the future, and what they do this year may make them better in that future. Betancourt is batting .259, Morse .293, Reed .258, Dobbs .209.

More importantly, Hargrove said, they’re learning the game at the highest level.

“We can talk about progress and improvement, but the bottom line is we fell short again, and that’s frustrating,” he said. “Tonight, we had a chance to win the game, but the kids were facing a very tough pitcher in Cordero.

“Maybe next time, the outcome changes.”

There are 38 “next times” left in the Mariners’ season, with 71 losses already on the ledger. When the roster expands in September, there may well be even more first-year players brought up, which means more lessons to learn.

Some will be painful. Some will mean losses.

“We had chances, all of us,” Beltre said. “One thing you know about the kids, they give you their best. Sometimes they try too hard, like all of us did at some point, but they give you their best.

“It will get better.”

The heat is on

The sweating started early in Arlington, and when the in-stadium temperature hit 104 degrees, Mike Hargrove was asked how he’d played here for five major league seasons.

“You adjust to it,” Hargrove said, “but you’d better make some concessions, too.”

As a rookie in 1974, he said, he took about 30 minutes of early batting practice one afternoon before a home game.

“I found my swing, went into the clubhouse and relaxed until game time,” Hargrove said. “And that night in the game, I was late on everything. You can’t overdo it in this heat. It takes it out of you.”

Adrian Beltre said he loved playing in warm weather, that he’d grown up in the heat of the Dominican Republic.

“But this, this is too hot, too humid,” he said of Texas. “One hundred and four degrees? Too hot!”

Hargrove made concessions for this series.

“The guys in our lineup will take their batting practice and come in,” he said. “I don’t want them standing around on the field in the heat before they have to.”

On Thursday, the Rangers and Mariners play a day game – when it figures to be even hotter – and bullpen coach Jim Slaton was already wincing.

“There’s no shade out there,” he said. “It’s hot enough in the shade, but without it? Lord.”