Hinske, Jays’ bats stifle M’s

TORONTO — When Eric Hinske’s second homer of the game left the park in the sixth inning and took the momentum of Seattle’s rollicking comeback with it, Richie Sexson took off his hat and put his hand to his head.

Any Mariner wielding a bat had to be scratching his head over what he had to do to give his team a win in the face of such strong opposition.

Unfortunately, the opposition in the Toronto Blue Jays’ 12-10 win on Tuesday night seemed to be Seattle pitching, where picking one’s poison among Aaron Sele, Shigetoshi Hasegawa and Matt Thornton was unnecessary since they all stunk up the joint.

In fact, Sexson’s puzzlement was only how Hinske’s sailing ball off Thornton even made it out, “nothing else,” he said.

But among the Mariners, who had 16 hits — including homers from Sexson, Adrian Beltre and Randy Winn — there had to be an extra twist to the knife to see such production go for naught.

And there was.

“It’s always frustrating to have a game as bad as I did tonight,” said starter Sele. “But it’s more frustrating when the guys go out and get you a month and a half worth of runs in one game, and you go right back out there and give up more runs.”

It seemed like the tide had turned in the sixth inning, when Seattle hammered out its fifth five-run inning in its past eight games. It included the Mariners hitting for the cycle, with Jeremy Reed leading off with a triple — having missed a homer by three inches — Ichiro doubling, two singles and Sexson’s 21st homer, to make the score 10-9.

But with a man on in the home half, Hinske, whose first two-run shot in the third gave Toronto a 6-3 lead, came to the plate. Thornton, struggling again in a game suddenly made close, hung a slider to Hinske, a left-handed hitter batting just .143 against left-handers.

With Sexson wondering how, the ball carried just beyond the wall in right and just inside the foul pole, and the Jays had edged away again for a 12-9 lead.

“It hurt then because I knew how excited the team was to get that close,” Thornton said. “But it hurt even more when we scored that one run in the eighth. If I don’t give up that homer, that run would have tied the game. That hurt.”

After Sele got a double-play grounder to help snuff a Jays’ bid in the first inning, the Mariners scored three times in the second, off Beltre’s leadoff homer and two walks by Jays starter Ted Lilly.

But Sele came back to walk Gregg Zaun to start the home second, hit Alex Rios and, with one out, loaded the bases on an Orlando Hudson infield single.

Sele almost escaped with allowing only one run, but with two away he gave up three more, the first of eight two-out runs Seattle was to allow Tuesday night

“I don’t know if you’d call that game a waste of offense,” Mariners manager Mike Hargrove said. “When you don’t pitch well, it’s never going to be a very good time.

“Sele had nothing, everything was up. Hasegawa got two outs in the fifth, then got hit so quick we didn’t have time to get Thornton ready, although we had him up after the first of those five hits.”