Hernandez pitches Seattle to victory

SEATTLE – Just seeing Detroit on the schedule should have the Seattle Mariners’ starting pitchers scared out of their skin by now.

But it was nothing like the shiver the Tigers put into Felix Hernandez on Saturday.

And he actually beat them.

In an otherwise dominant, two-hit 5-0 shutout of the Tigers at Safeco Field – supported by the relief of Brandon Morrow and J.J. Putz and a bizarre steal of home by catcher Kenji Johjima – the M’s young right-hander nearly got a real feel for what his rotation mates have been enduring symbolically.

A third inning shot off the bat of Tigers catcher Ivan Rodriguez didn’t crack Hernandez’s skull only because the 22-year-old right-hander managed to get his glove up in self-defense in the nick of time. As a bonus, he was able to crawl over and retrieve the baseball and still throw out Rodriguez at first base.

“Don’t tell me about that – I don’t want to remember that at all,” Hernandez said. “I made the play, but I was scared, too. I don’t catch the ball – the ball catch me.”

Manager John McLaren was almost as shaken.

“When it happened, I looked over to the left on the scoreboard,” he said, “and it said, ‘Ground ball to pitcher.’ If that’s a ground ball…

“Felix was laughing out there, but he knew how close he came. That ball was a bullet.”

But otherwise, it was Hernandez throwing the bullets.

In four previous blitzes of the Mariners, Detroit hitters had produced 37 runs – 28 of them off Seattle starters. And the Tigers had two runners on with one out in the first Saturday, only to have Hernandez blow away Magglio Ordonez and Marcus Thames on strikeouts.

Over the next six innings, Hernandez (3-5) faced just one batter over the minimum 18 and surrendered just one more hit, an Ordonez single wiped out by a nifty Adrian Beltre-started double play in the fourth. Hernandez – winning his first decision since April 16 – left after seven innings and just 87 pitches due to a tired calf muscle, but Morrow and Putz were similarly untouchable.

“When my two-seamer (fastball) is working, they can swing at all the first pitches they want,” Hernandez said, “but they’re going to get ground balls, fly balls, a lot of quick outs.”

But the Tigers encountered more than just masterful pitching Saturday. On a day devoted to a salute to Latin American baseball – Seattle’s uniforms said “Marineros” across the front – the M’s played what McLaren called “a clean game – good defense, a little hitting and great pitching.”

It was also Seattle’s third win in its last four games – nothing to vault the Mariners into pennant contention after a miserable 8-20 May, but a flicker of light, at least.

“I hope we can do this a lot more,” McLaren said.

It would help if the M’s, the worst team in the American League in hitting with runners in scoring position, could build on the example they set early against Tigers starter Justin Verlander (2-8), who gave up one-out singles to Jose Lopez and Jose Vidro in the first inning, and then walked Raul Ibanez.

Beltre’s sinking looper was snagged by a diving Curtis Granderson in short left-center for the second out, but Johjima smacked the next pitch into left field for a two-run single.

The other runs were not quite so conventional.

Johjima led off the fourth inning with a double and took third on Jeremy Reed’s ground ball. When McLaren ordered a squeeze bunt and Johjima broke for home, Verlander’s pitch bounced well in front of the plate and Miguel Cairo was not able to make contact – but Rodriguez couldn’t control the ball and tagged Johjima with an empty hand. Cairo then singled and eventually scored when Tigers shortstop Edgar Renteria lost the handle on a double-play exchange.

Johjima knew his steal of home came with an asterisk.

“There was nothing I could have done,” he said through an interpreter. “There was no way I could go back because if I did, I would have been out. Fortunately, Pudge dropped the ball twice.

“That is not a true home steal. Obviously, you know it was a squeeze play. In fact, I wanted you to ask about my steal of third base the other game because that was a better steal. That you need skills to do.”

Reed finished the scoring with his first home run of the season, a shot into the right field seats in the eighth inning.