Bye-bye baseball five times
SEATTLE – Jamie Moyer proved for 20 years that velocity doesn’t matter when a pitcher has location. No game illustrated it more powerfully than Friday’s.
Unable to pitch to the corners of the strike zone, Moyer became little more than fodder for a Boston Red Sox home-run show when he left too many pitches over the middle of the plate at Safeco Field.
The Red Sox hit five home runs off the Mariners’ veteran left-hander and took an eight-run lead on their way to a 9-4 victory.
“It was not a typical start for Jamie,” manager Mike Hargrove said. “Things come and go. This game is a cycle.”
A sellout crowd of 46,325, many of them cheering and chanting for the Red Sox, watched as Boston scored all eight of its runs off Moyer on home runs.
David Ortiz pulled a pitch into the right-field seats in the first inning for a 1-0 lead.
Alex Gonzalez crushed one to left for a two-run homer in the third inning and Jason Varitek led off the fourth with a solo homer, making the score 4-0.
The Red Sox saved their best for the fifth.
Moyer walked Gonzalez to start the inning and Kevin Youkilis parked Moyer’s second pitch over the left-field fence for a two-run home run.
Moyer then walked Ortiz with one out and centered one last pitch to Manny Ramirez, who launched it into the Mariners bullpen in left for another two-run homer and an 8-0 Red Sox lead.
Soft-tossing pitchers like Moyer are prone to such games when their control wanders, but this was an all-timer for him. He’d never allowed five home runs in a game in his career, and it tied an 18-year-old Mariners record. Mark Langston gave up five home runs on April 19, 1988, against the Chicago White Sox.
The Red Sox, whose 124 home runs this season rank them fourth in the American League, took full advantage of what they were offered.
Moyer has allowed 23 home runs this season. He has allowed 10 in the past three games.
He also has struggled to win this season at home, where he was 10-0 last year. Run support has been an issue but not this time, as Moyer fell to 3-5 at Safeco Field this season and 5-9 overall. He hasn’t won since June 24.
The Mariners scored their runs in pairs. They got two in the fifth on two errors, a wild pitch by Red Sox starter Kyle Snyder and a sacrifice fly by Willie Bloomquist. They scored two again in the seventh when they reached reliever Craig Hansen for four hits, including an RBI double by Adam Jones – his first career major league RBI – and a run-scoring single by Ichiro Suzuki.
By the end, all the Mariners showed for their night was a four-hit game by Yuniesky Betancourt had for hits for the second time this season.