Mariners back Bedard with 16 hits, Ichiro extends streak
LARRY LARUE; The News Tribune
Ichiro Suzuki extended the longest hitting streak in franchise history, Erik Bedard shut out Baltimore into the seventh inning, and while the same could almost have been said 24 hours earlier, this time the Seattle Mariners did something different.
They won.
A night after Jarrod Washburn went seven innings and lost to the Orioles, 1-0, Bedard didn’t go quite as far but got the run support that eluded his teammate, and Seattle beat Baltimore, 8-2.
Some of the credit had to go to manager Don Wakamatsu’s newest lineup – his 45th in 53 games. This one put first baseman Russell Branyan behind Ichiro, putting the two Mariners with the highest on-base percentage on the team, at the top of the order.
“What we wanted were as many at-bats for Ichiro and Russell as we could get. We wanted to pressure the other team all night,” Wakamatsu said.
What Wakamatsu hoped for, he got. He wanted to get to the heart of the Seattle lineup – Adrian Beltre, Ken Griffey Jr. and Jose Lopez – with men on base. It seemed to spark the heart of that batting order.
Ichiro kept doing what Ichiro does. Branyan singled, walked and hit a long two-run home run.
Beltre had three hits, scored twice. Griffey had a pair of doubles and his 617th career home run, and Lopez had three doubles and three RBI.
It was the managerial stuff of genius, with one caveat. It has to work again.
“We tried thinking outside the box, but anything we come up with, the players have to make work,” Wakamatsu said. “Tonight, they did.”
That new, improved Seattle lineup paid dividends in the first inning, when Ichiro beat out a ground ball to shortstop – extending that hitting streak to 26 games – and Branyan singled sharply into right field.
Two outs later, they were still perched at first and second base, when the Mariners got something they haven’t seen lately – a bit of good luck. Lopez flied deep to left field, and Baltimore’s Nolan Reimold broke the wrong way, got turned around and had the ball bang off his glove.
Two-run double.
Yes, it should have been caught, but Lopez wasn’t much bothered by that, and Seattle fans certainly didn’t seemed disturbed.
One small misstep, and the Mariners had a 2-0 lead.
“The difference tonight was we scored,” Bedard said. “We got runners over, we pushed them home, and that was the story.”
Given that early luxury, the Mariners never blew open the game with a big inning. Instead, they pecked away, adding single runs in the third, fifth and sixth innings – and rode Bedard as far as he could take them.
Not surprisingly, that was not much past 100 pitches. And once Bedard reached the century mark in the seventh inning, his command left him. A single, two one-out walks, and when Bedard handed the game to Sean White, it was with the bases loaded.
Bedard’s night ended after his 112th pitch. That’s the most he’s thrown in a game since Aug. 28, 2007, when the Orioles employed him.
All White did was get two ground-ball outs, the last one on a comebacker from Brian Roberts. One run scored, but two baserunners were stranded in scoring position.
For White, it was just another superb job in a stretch where he has provided Seattle nothing but. The 28-year-old right-hander, a non-roster spring training invitee after kicking around for two seasons in the Seattle minor league system, has become one of the bright spots in a bullpen filled with them.
At the moment, he’s got a 14-inning scoreless streak working.
“That was as big a point in the game as there was,” Wakamatsu said. “I know people love to hear about hitting, but it was pitching, pitching, pitching again tonight.”
Before running out of petrol at the 100-pitch mark, Bedard’s performance was vintage, and came in front of a handful of scouts, including one from Philadelphia. What they saw had to leave an impression.
It certainly did on Orioles hitters.
Bedard had a crisp fastball, topping out at 93 mph, and control of it. What makes him special, however, is that big breaking ball and his ability to throw it for strikes. In 6 innings, he struck out seven batters – five frozen by that curve.
“I still know a lot of those guys,” Bedard said, smiling. “I’ll probably get a few texts from them later tonight.”
By allowing just one run Monday and two Tuesday, the Mariners lowered their staff earned-run average to 3.92, and their 16 hits in this game pulled their team batting average to .258.
Beltre, Griffey and Lopez – the 3-4-5 hitters – were a combined 9-for-15 with five doubles, a home run and five RBI.
“We executed pretty well,” Wakamatsu said. “We got the guys we wanted at the top of the lineup to the plate 10 times, we got the heart of the lineup swinging the bats a little better and we got an exceptional game from Bedard. That works.”
larry.larue@thenewstribune.com
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