M’s find formula

SEATTLE – Now that the Seattle Mariners have found the formula for victory, it seems fairly simple.

Get at least six strong innings from their starting pitcher. In Wednesday night’s 4-2 triumph over the Toronto Blue Jays, it came from Jarrod Washburn.

Follow him with a bullpen that’s been stout the past two months.

And support that pitching with a healthy dose of clutch hitting, in this case from Miguel Cairo.

Ahem … Miguel Cairo? The little-used bench player with the.206 batting average and two extra-base hits all season?

Cairo, making his second start this season at second base, hit an RBI double in the third inning and a two-run double in the fifth. It was only his second two-hit game of the season, but it helped the Mariners win for the fifth time in the past six games.

“You’ve got to come to the ballpark expecting to play and expecting to help the team that day,” he said. “You never know when you’re going to get a chance.”

Cairo has started 16 games this season, 11 of them at first base. He has hardly gone stale, however, after playing in all nine of the Mariners’ interleague road games before this homestand.

“It helped me the last week that I played more defense and pinch-hit,” he said.

Manager Jim Riggleman is trying to get more playing time for his bench players to keep them sharp in case an injury to a starter forces them into more regular duty.

“I needed to get him in there for some at-bats and he went over the top for us,” Riggleman said.

Cairo helped the Mariners deliver just enough run support for Washburn, who has turned his season around in his past five starts. He has a 1.72 earned run average in those starts, with victories in his past two to raise his record to 4-7.

“He’s the ultimate professional,” Riggleman said. “Early in the year when he wasn’t getting his wins, he was the first guy saying ‘I can pitch out of the bullpen if you need it.’ He was outstanding again. That’s four or five in a row and hopefully that will continue.”

Washburn scattered seven hits over six innings and was burned only once when he threw a chest-high fastball that Adam Lind hit over the center-field fence for a two-run homer in the fifth inning.

That tied the score at 2-2, but the Mariners responded in the bottom of the fifth inning when Yuniesky Betancourt and Ichiro Suzuki hit back-to-back singles before Cairo doubled to left-center field off Blue Jays starter Dustin McGowan to give the Mariners a final 4-2 lead.