M’s Hernandez endures rare rough outing in loss
SEATTLE – Felix Hernandez just couldn’t get anybody out when he needed to most.
Not in the fourth inning, when the Mariners’ ace watched a towering blast to right by George Kottaras clear the wall for a three-run homer. Nor in the fifth, when this 6-1 loss to the Oakland Athletics was blown wide open and Hernandez gave up hit after hit until he was pulled.
Hernandez wound up taking one of his worst poundings of the season on Friday night and now will have to bear down the final few weeks to stay atop the Cy Young Award leaderboard.
For the Mariners, this was the 17th game in a row in which they’ve done all of their scoring in just one or two innings. That wasn’t going to be nearly enough in this one once Kottaras unloaded off Hernandez in that fourth to make it a 4-1 game.
Nor would it be enough, the way A’s rookie A.J. Griffin has handled his business in getting off to a 5-0 start for his contending team. Griffin is the first Oakland pitcher since Todd Burns in 1988 to begin his career with five wins.
The crowd of 17,128 at Safeco Field, including hundreds of yellow-clad “King’s Court” denizens down the left-field line, was stunned into subdued silence after the Kottaras home run. And Hernandez never seemed to recover, as he allowed four consecutive one-out hits to the A’s in the fifth with his pitch count climbing rapidly toward 100.
The Mariners tried to let him finish the inning, and it looked like he might after right fielder Eric Thames threw out Yoenis Cespedes trying to go from first to third on the second of the hits. But after that second out, Hernandez gave up a run-scoring double to the left-field corner by Josh Donaldson and then a single to right by Stephen Drew that brought the sixth run home.
Hernandez was done from there, getting charged with the six runs – only five earned. He surrendered 11 hits in 4 2/3 innings.
His earned-run average climbed from 2.51 to 2.67, though he still has a slight ERA lead over Justin Verlander of the Tigers. Hernandez and Verlander remain in a dead heat in most statistical categories.
The one unearned run came in the first inning when right fielder Thames was slow to react to a Cespedes blooper that fell in for a single. Thames also looked a little nonchalant as he approached the ball, only to have it take a funny hop and skip on by him.
Seth Smith scored all the way from first base on the error to make it 1-0. In a sense, that play might have indicated to Hernandez that it just wasn’t going to be his night, even though the M’s tied the game in the second inning on a Brendan Ryan single.
Hernandez hasn’t taken a beating this bad since getting rocked for eight runs – six earned – over just 3 2/3 innings in Cleveland back on May 16. The second straight loss in as many outings for Hernandez is the first time that’s happened since the Cleveland game and an earlier contest in New York.
The Mariners continued their trend of not scoring much when Hernandez starts a game. This was the fourth time in the last five outings started by Hernandez in which Seattle has been held to two runs or fewer.
Griffin was pulled after his pitch count ran up to 109 over 5 1/3 innings. By that point, he was up by five runs, had scattered six hits, struck out seven and had walked just one batter.