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Seattle Mariners

M’s keep Padres at bay

Latest win is Seattle’s 10th in a row at San Diego

Ichiro Suzuki was robbed of a single on this hard grounder.  (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
Larry Stone Seattle Times

SAN DIEGO – For the Seattle Mariners, the J.J. Putz trade is the gift that keeps on giving.

On the same day they added Mike Carp – the sixth player on the active roster from that deal, either directly or indirectly – pitcher Garrett Olson, another Putz product, earned the victory.

Olson fired six strong innings as the Mariners handed San Diego its 13th consecutive interleague loss, 4-3, on Wednesday night. The Padres have lost seven in a row to the Mariners overall, and 10 straight at Petco Park.

Olson came over from the Cubs, along with Ronny Cedeno, on Jan. 28 for pitcher Aaron Heilman, one of seven players acquired by general manager Jack Zduriencik in the three-way trade that sent Putz, Sean Green and Jeremy Reed to the Mets, and Luis Valbuena to the Indians.

Also on the team from that deal are Franklin Gutierrez (who scored the winning run in the fifth), Endy Chavez and Jason Vargas.

Olson (2-1) allowed only two hits – homers by Kevin Kouzmanoff and Chase Headley. He struck out four and walked one.

The Mariners’ decisive run came not via a hit, but a throw – a wild one by Padres catcher Nick Hundley.

With the scored tied at 3 in the top of the fifth, Gutierrez led off with a walk, moved to second on Olson’s sacrifice, and took third on Ichiro Suzuki’s sharp single to right.

With Russell Branyan at the plate, Hundley thought Gutierrez was wandering too far off third and fired a throw to third baseman Kouzmanoff. But the ball glanced off a diving Gutierrez and down the line, allowing the Mariners runner to scramble to his feet and score.

That lead held, with relief work by Mark Lowe, Sean White and David Aardsma (who earned his 12th save), but not without a major scare in the eighth.

The Padres loaded the bases with two outs, thanks partly to a catcher’s interference call against Jamie Burke, before Kouzmanoff’s hot grounder to third was turned into a force out by Adrian Beltre.

The Padres had scored first on Kouzmanoff’s homer to left in the second on a 0-2 pitch by Olson.

The Mariners came back to take the lead with three in the fourth off Padres starter Chad Gaudin. Branyan, who will leave the team briefly today to attend his grandfather’s funeral in Georgia, led off with a single and came around to score on Ken Griffey’s double against the wall in left-center.

Jose Lopez then blasted a two-run home run onto the second-deck overhang in left-center off Gaudin. Lopez has four homers in the first eight games of this nine-game trip.

The Padres came right back to tie the score in the bottom of the fourth on Headley’s homer onto the third level of the Western Metal Supply Co. warehouse that sits behind left field at Petco Park.

That blast, too, came on a 0-2 pitch by Olson.

Carp, called up from Triple-A Tacoma when left-hander Erik Bedard went on the 15-day disabled list with shoulder inflammation, made his major league debut as a pinch-hitter for Olson in the seventh and walked. Carp had 38 walks in 58 games for Tacoma, with a .412 on-base percentage.