Mariners endure Bay blues
OAKLAND, Calif. – For the Seattle Mariners, this city is like the bad memory you insist you’ll never think about but cannot forget.
They tried hard on Thursday to adopt a what-happens-in-Oakland-stays-in-Oakland philosophy and move on to the opening of a three-game series at Safeco Field tonight with the San Francisco Giants.
When they flew north, however, they packed angst with them, and yet another three-game sweep by the Athletics in a 9-6 loss Thursday was hard to overlook.
“The adage in baseball is play .500 on the road, win at home and you’ll have a good year,” manager Mike Hargrove said. “Well, we just had a .500 road trip. It wasn’t great. It wasn’t good. But it didn’t suck – and I hate that word.”
Everyone was a bit edgy after this one.
Seattle’s six-game swing through the American League West began with three victories in Anaheim, and ended with three losses in Oakland, where the Mariners are 0-6 in 2006.
Against the Athletics anywhere, the Mariners are 1-9.
Less than 15 hours after Joel Piñeiro pitched so badly he put his job in jeopardy, the Mariners started Jarrod Washburn. And Washburn picked up where Piñeiro left off.
“Every time I needed to make a big pitch, I didn’t,” Washburn said. “A couple of guys I walked, it was like they had a force field around the plate. I’d try to throw one down the middle and I couldn’t. I was terrible.”
Handed a 3-0 lead in the second inning, Washburn handed it back. For an inning or two, this was a game that neither team wanted.
The Athletics stumbled so badly in the second inning they were lucky to get out of it just down three – and they knew it.
Two fielding errors and two Seattle hits added up to three runs, but the Mariners left the bases loaded.
“We were sloppy,” manager Ken Macha said. “It could have been a lot worse.”
For Seattle, it promptly got that way.
A two-out, two-run double by Dan Johnson – who had four hits – cut the Seattle lead to 3-2 in the second inning.
A two-out, two-run home run by Bobby Kielty in the bottom of the third made it 4-3, Oakland.
A two-out, two-run double by Nick Swisher in the fourth inning put the Athletics ahead, 6-3.
All the while, Washburn was making mistakes.
“Jarrod kept telling us he felt great, and we kept waiting for it to get better,” Hargrove said. “It didn’t.”
Washburn’s control was so erratic that twice he walked No. 9 hitter Antonio Perez, a designated hitter batting .054 this season. Perez had reached base all of five times in 24 games this season – two hits and one walk – before Washburn walked him twice.
Oh, the Mariners’ offense made a run, scoring twice in the fifth inning on RBI singles from Richie Sexson and Carl Everett. That cut Oakland’s lead to 6-5.
Hargrove went to his bullpen after that fifth. Emiliano Fruto worked out of trouble in the sixth, but couldn’t get out of it an inning later. The first two Athletics hitters reached base, and Fruto was replaced by George Sherrill. Sherrill got one out, walked a batter and gave up an RBI single.
Rafael Soriano replaced Sherrill, got one out and then allowed a two-run single to Johnson that hit the cut of the outfield grass and hopped over second baseman Jose Lopez to make the score 9-5
Notes
A’s starting pitcher Esteban Loaiza put aside his legal troubles long enough to earn the win after spending one night in jail this week.
Loaiza, who spent Tuesday night in jail on suspicion of drunken driving, got through six innings to earn his second straight victory since coming off the disabled list.
“I was thinking about a lot of stuff, but when I got to the ballpark I just wanted to stay positive,” Loaiza said. “I can’t say much, but I can say I’m sorry for what I’ve done for my teammates, for the Oakland Athletics, Major League Baseball and the fans.”