M’s still in A.L. West hunt

ANAHEIM, Calif. – These aren’t the 2001 Seattle Mariners, and this isn’t a team thinking about 116 wins.

After back-to-back losing years, these Mariners came out of spring training hoping to contend in the American League West – and were optimistic about their chances of their first .500 season since 2003.

Turns out, the latter might give them the former.

Seattle’s 4-1 victory over the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim on Friday was its seventh in the past nine games, pushed the Mariners to within five games of .500 and, yes, kept them very much in the heart of the A.L. West standings.

“I don’t want to sound like a cliché, but we’re not looking back and we’re trying not to look ahead,” said Raul I banez, who hit his 11th home run. “We’re playing in the moment. We’re focusing on each pitch, each inning, each game.”

The pitching of Jarrod Washburn and the Seattle bullpen stopped the Angels offense, allowing the Mariners to leap frog Los Angeles in the standings and gain a game on division-leading Texas.

While this is June, not September, and certainly not the pennant race of anyone’s dreams, the Seattle Mariners awakened this morning 4 1/2 games out of first place.

Talk about your baby steps: Seattle hasn’t had a winning month since September 2003 but is 6-2 in June.

As manager Mike Hargrove would have you believe, the Mariners may just be a team coming together.

If so, they had help in this game.

Washburn ground his way through six innings, only one of them easy. When he departed, it was with a 3-1 lead – and two of the runs were gifts of his old teammate, Vladimir Guerrero.

Ahead in the fourth inning, 1-0, the Mariners ‘rallied’ for two runs with one hit when Guerrero overran a ball.