M’s rediscover pitching prowess
SEATTLE – They lost all 11 games on the last road trip and nobody could put a finger on the reason for such a plummet.
Saturday, after the Seattle Mariners beat the Boston Red Sox 4-3 at Safeco Field for their third straight victory, the reasons were clear to see.
Consistent starting pitching has returned – a missing element on the trip that took the Mariners out of contention in the American League West. Gil Meche held Boston to five hits and two runs in seven innings, his best start since he beat Detroit on a four-hitter through seven on July 9.
Timely hitting also came back. Raul Ibanez had three hits and drove in a run – his team-high 98th RBI this season; Yuniesky Betancourt homered in the seventh inning to tie the score 2-2; Adrian Beltre homered in the eighth as the M’s came back to tie again, 3-3; and Ben Broussard, whose transition to the DH platoon has been anything but smooth since he arrived last month in a trade, drove in Ibanez with a sacrifice fly in the eighth.
All that, plus another Manny Moment by the Red Sox’s unpredictable Manny Ramirez, contributed to what has become a turnaround as unlikely by the Mariners as that long losing streak.
“We have played with an intensity we didn’t have on that road trip, but with an intensity we had before that trip,” manager Mike Hargrove said. “Pride is always at stake, but sanity was at stake after that trip. These guys will tell you that the last thing they want to do is look like a bunch of idiots in front of 35 or 40 thousand people.”
Except for a 9-2 pasting by the New York Yankees on Wednesday, the Mariners have played crisp baseball.
Meche, whose last victory was July 14 at Toronto, didn’t get the decision, but he held Boston to only Coco Crisp’s solo home run in the third inning and Mark Loretta’s RBI single in the fifth.
The Mariners needed that because 43-year-old David Wells, who throws slower than the Seattle Monorail and breaks down almost as often these days, pitched almost as well.
Wells gave up eight hits and two runs in seven innings, and was in line to win the game when the Red Sox scored a run in the eighth to take a 3-2 lead.
The play that could have put Boston over the top, a base-running gaffe by Ramirez, helped contribute to the Red Sox’s 8-17 record in August.
Ramirez was on first when Mark Lowell slapped a single off closer J.J. Putz with two outs in the eighth, scoring David Ortiz to put the Red Sox ahead by a run. Ramirez rounded second and ran for third, where Ibanez made a high throw to Beltre.
Ramirez, however, chopped his steps and went into the bag standing up, an easy tag for the third out by Beltre.
The Red Sox brought right-hander Mike Timlin to the mound in the eight, and he quickly got two strikes on Beltre. Timlin threw his third pitch in what he thought was an unhittable spot, well outside, but Beltre drove it into the right-field seats for his 16th home run and, more important, a 3-3 tie. Beltre hit a similar two-strike pitch for a homer on Tuesday for the winning run in the Mariners’ first game of the homestand.
“That pitch was way off the plate,” Francona said. “(Timlin) was as surprised as anyone that it left the park.”
The Mariners then went about winning the game.
Ibanez singled to left and went to third on Richie Sexson’s single to right, and Hargrove sent Broussard to the plate as a pinch-hitter for Eduardo Perez.
Broussard, hitting .206 in 23 games since the Mariners acquired him from the Cleveland Indians, hit a fly to deep center that easily scored Ibanez with the winning run.
Putz then struck out all three Red Sox he faced in the ninth – Eric Hinske, Javy Lopez and Alex Cora – to finish his third victory this season.