DeJesus blast tops Morrow, M’s
KANSAS CITY, Mo. – A dismayed Brandon Morrow sat alone in the training room as Mariners interim general manager Lee Pelekoudas gave him a pat on the shoulder. It’s what you do when a closer has blown his second straight save on a homer. This time, a 5-4 defeat to the Kansas City Royals on Saturday night was sealed by a David DeJesus walkoff blast.
But moments before Pelekoudas and several teammates delivered their gentle pats, manager Jim Riggleman had offered his own, slightly harder knock on his team’s collective head. In a closed-door session, the cheers of opposing fans still ringing in the outer corridors, Riggleman reminded his players that they can’t keep making mistakes like they did long before Morrow became a factor.
“I just reminded them that we do not have an offensive club out there right now that’s going to overcome a lot of mistakes,” Riggleman said after his team’s sixth loss in seven games.
Former Mariners pitcher Horacio Ramirez emerged with the victory, tossing 21/3 innings of scoreless relief. The Mariners had tagged another ex-Seattle pitcher, Royals starter Gil Meche, for four runs in the sixth to take their first lead of the contest.
Raul Ibanez hit a two-run homer, then Jeremy Reed clubbed a two-run double. Reed had advanced to third with one out on the throw home, but he tried to score on the same play when the ball skipped away from the catcher. Reed was thrown out easily, and the chance at a huge insurance run died there.
No matter what the M’s do the rest of this disastrous season, getting them to play the game properly has been a prime objective of team officials.
The attitude of the coaching staff and the front office remains the same: Unless this team changes the way it goes about playing games, none of those other changes will have enough of a desired impact in the long run.
The crowd of 23,792 leaped to its feet in the ninth as DeJesus cranked Morrow’s first pitch into the right-field bullpen. Morrow had entered the inning with a 4-3 lead and notched two quick outs before walking Billy Butler on four pitches to bring up DeJesus.
Tug Hulett, the son of former major leaguer and current Spokane Indians manager Tim Hulett, made his big league debut as M’s designated hitter and singled in the fifth for his first hit.