Tigers pounce on one pitch
SEATTLE –– Mike Hargrove’s magic touch worked for a while.
But, proving that pitchouts and hit-and-run plays can mask shaky pitching for only so long, the Seattle Mariners coughed up Hargrove’s successful moves along with a late lead in an 8-5 loss to the Detroit Tigers on Tuesday at Safeco Field.
One pitch made all the difference.
Dmitri Young hit a three-run homer in the eighth inning off reliever Ron Villone, who tried to sneak a low-outside changeup. Young lunged and yanked it over the left-field fence to wipe out a 5-4 Mariners lead.
Hargrove had brought in the left-handed Villone to turn around the switch-hitting Young, who had hit just two of his 16 home runs from the right side. Villone got two strikes on Young and went sidearm trying to fool the hitter, a seldom-seen move by a left-hander against a right-handed hitter.
“I hope I don’t see it again,” Hargrove said.
Villone said he wouldn’t hesitate to throw the same pitch again. He thought he had Young set up, and that he could fool him with a different arm angle.
“He put some good wood on it,” Villone said. “I don’t know how he did it, but he did. I was trying to get a ground ball, but he made a great swing on a good pitch.”
That, in essence, defined the Mariners’ night.
Good moves, especially by Hargrove in the sixth inning when the Mariners took the lead, went for nothing more than their 56th loss of the season.
Hargrove called a pitchout that snuffed a Tigers squeeze bunt in the sixth, then he ordered a hit-and-run that sparked a three-run rally that gave the Mariners a one-run lead.
Pitching nullified all of that.
Starter Joel Pineiro, who has won once since April 26, was rarely hit hard by the Tigers, but he was hit often. They slapped 10 hits off him in 5 1/3 innings, and he pitched with baserunners in every inning. While most were bloops into the outfield or bouncers through the infield, they all added up to a 4-2 Tigers lead through 4½ innings.
Carlos Guillen broke a scoreless tie in the third with a two-out single to left field, Dmitri Young drove in two runs with a double in the fourth, and Chris Shelton fisted a bloop single to score another run in the fifth.
When Pineiro put the first two runners on base in the sixth – Ivan Rodriguez blooped a single to right and Young grounded a hit into left field, and both runners advanced on Omar Infante’s sacrifice bunt – Hargrove had seen enough.
However, in the process of replacing his starter with right-hander Julio Mateo, Hargrove spoke directly to Pineiro on the mound.
“I thought Joel had his best stuff tonight and if he continues to throw like that, we’re in business with him,” Hargrove said. “That’s what I told him.”
That pep talk over, Hargrove handed the ball to Mateo and flashed his golden touch.
After Mateo threw strike one to John McDonald, Hargrove called for a pitchout. McDonald could only watch as catcher Miguel Olivo stepped out and caught the ball and ran Rodriguez back to third base, where Adrian Beltre tagged him for the second out. Mateo then struck out McDonald to end the threat.