Moyer turns back the clock

SEATTLE – Losers of six of their last seven going into Friday night’s series opener with Kansas City, the Mariners must have figured that a four-game series against the even-lowlier Royals spelled the opportunity to get right again.

It will take more than two straight wins to right this ship, but on Friday at Safeco Field the Mariners proved seaworthy for the second straight game. A mighty display of offense it was not – compared to the way the Mariners swung the bats on Wednesday in Texas – but a 4-0 shutout win did just fine.

At 24-32 and trying to stay in the American League West race, the Mariners will certainly take it.

Starting pitcher Jamie Moyer sparkled, allowing just two hits on his way to a complete game, by far his best outing of 2006. Moyer retired the Royals in order in the ninth as the crowd chanted the left-hander’s name, and needed just 93 pitches and two hours to do it.

It was Moyer’s first complete-game shutout since July 1, 2002, also against the Royals, and the fastest game in Safeco Field history, eclipsing a 2-hour, 1-minute game on Aug. 9, 2005.

“It was crisp and it was quick,” Moyer said. “And that’s a fun game to be a part of.”

Back-to-back home runs by Jose Lopez and Raul Ibanez in the bottom of the seventh inning made Moyer a winner, as he improved to 3-5.

Better late than never, as far as the Mariners offense was concerned. Seattle scored all of its runs in its final two trips to the plate.

Moyer did more than his part, holding the Royals hitless for four innings until Emil Brown led off the fifth with a single up the middle. The inning proved to be the Royals’ best scoring threat, as they put runners at second and third base with two outs before Moyer got Angel Berroa to ground out to shortstop.

Other teams might have been able to produce when helped by a Seattle error (shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt’s seventh of the season) and the failure to turn a double play. But these Royals are 13-39 for a reason.

Not that the Mariners fared much better for most of the game. Their only hits through six innings were a leadoff double in the second from Ibanez – who never advanced from second base – and a one-out Ichiro single in the sixth.

Kansas City’s Bobby Keppel, making his first major-league start, kept the Mariners off balance and worked the outside edge of the plate well against Seattle’s right-handed hitters. He, too, was solid in limiting the Mariners to six hits over 6 2/3 innings.

But four of those six hits came in the Mariners seventh as Keppel unraveled. Lopez, batting third in the order for the third straight game, sent the first pitch of the inning into the lower deck in left field for his ninth home run of the year.

Ibanez hit Keppel’s next pitch on a line to right field for his ninth homer of the season.

The Mariners added insurance runs off Royals reliever Jeremy Affeldt, a Northwest Christian High graduate, in the bottom of the eighth, as Lopez doubled into the left-field corner to drive in Ichiro and Beltre.