Theories down drain as M’s try not to sink

SEATTLE – Well, another theory down the drain.

Along with another October.

Not that they’re thinking that in the Seattle Mariners’ clubhouse. Not only is the Mariners’ mug half full, it’s half full o’ grog – and rather than using it to drown their sorrows after being swept by the Oakland A’s this weekend, the M’s instead are toasting their rosy prospects.

“There were a lot of positives to take out of this game,” said manager Mike Hargrove after the A’s made it a matched set with a 7-6 victory on Sunday at Safeco Field.

“Six games is not a lot,” said third baseman Adrian Beltre, eyeballing the standings.

“We just ran out of innings,” said DH Eduardo Perez, who apparently thinks more are on back order from the West Coast distributor.

“Obviously, if we thought this was a life or death series,” said Willie Bloomquist, whose game-ending whiff left the tying run on second, “we’d be dead now.”

And this club is no corpse.

It just plays one against the A’s.

If Rick Rizzs didn’t pass along the unhappy totals on Sunday’s telecast, this is now 12 straight that the Mariners have lost to Oakland after winning their first meeting this season. Over two seasons, they’ve dropped 35 of 50. It’s not a club-record whammy – the 1977 and ‘78 Mariners lost 15 in a row to Boston, but dredging up expansion-era evidence takes on the aroma of an autopsy.

Hey, that’s baseball – teams every year of every stripe are jinxed by one opponent, just as they might own another.

Except that finishing ahead of this particular opponent is the only way for the Mariners to fulfill their playoff aspirations, which the clear-thinking world has already filed under KT, as in Kidding Themselves.

No, it’s not mathematically impossible. Neither is beating Oakland.

It’s just that the M’s can’t do it.

Their former skipper, Lou Piniella, was in town over the weekend to do color on Saturday’s game for Fox, and he offered up the notion that one obvious cure for this curse was for the Mariners to jump to a quick lead and not have to continually play from behind against Oakland’s pitching, which has pretty much been the case in the other 11 losses.

Remarkably, Seattle did that very thing Sunday – getting two runs in the first with the help of some especially aggressive base-running by Raul Ibanez.

And two innings later, the lead was gone when M’s starter Gil Meche threw an ill-conceived – and executed – 95 mph heater to Frank Thomas, who re-heated it 404 feet into the left field seats for a three-run homer.

“Pretty much the turning point of the game,” sighed Meche, whose problems didn’t end there, since he left the game after five trailing 6-2.

Meche, bless his heart, was the one Mariner who wasn’t afraid to acknowledge how important winning Sunday’s game could have been and what sort of price one misjudgment could exact.

The misjudgment? Throwing an 0-2 fastball to Thomas after what the Big Hurt called two “incredible” curveballs. Meche wanted to throw it up and in, and only got it up. But mostly, he wanted it back.

“Seeing what his reaction was to the first two curveballs, it looked like he had no chance to hit (one),” Meche said. “In the back of my mind, I was saying just bury another breaking ball, get it lower and make him swing over it, get the punchout right here. Then you get the other side – you know, you’ve got to pitch him in just to show him (you can pitch) in. A guy like him, you don’t want to triple up pitches – but seeing his reaction off the first two, why not?”

And seeing that homer rocket out of Safeco, especially, why not?

“I knew I had to win the game,” he said bluntly. “It was a feeling I had – I had to step up and come in here and give us the best chance of winning, Everybody says you can’t try to throw a shutout every time, but this was a day, I tell you, when every thought in my mind was to come out and throw zero after zero.

“There were a lot of expectations this weekend, obviously. It was a chance to pick up some games. People have been saying we’ve got a lot of games left, but it wouldn’t have hurt to pick up some games. Instead of being one or two out, now we’re 6 (actually, 6 1/2), so it puts a little pressure on you.”

Yes, two months of baseball remain, but the M’s have managed to hang tough in the not-so-tough American League West with the second youngest roster in baseball. That’s worth an attaboy, to be sure, but the big surge of June that kept them alive is not likely to be repeated. That was achieved mostly against the wonder drug that is the Kansas City Royals and the curative spa that is the National League West.

Ahead for Seattle are 52 games – 39 of which are against division leaders, the wild-card leaders and other teams above .500.

Including six against, ahem, Oakland.

“Obviously, they’ve had our number a little bit this year,” said Bloomquist. “That doesn’t mean we don’t think we’re a better team than they are.”

And yet another theory down the drain.