The Seattle Mariners came up with a Pavlovian reward system for their starting pitcher – for each fast inning he turned in, they’d score a run or two.
It worked out well for Ryan Rowland-Smith and his team, which hurried through the Chicago White Sox en route to a 4-1 victory Wednesday – a win that left the Mariners with 75 victories and 16 games to play.
Rowland-Smith, the Australian bulldog who had been shut out in two of his previous three starts, opened the night with a 10-pitch first inning, and the Mariners immediately gave him what he hadn’t had in those two losses – runs.
“You score early, the whole dugout relaxes,” Rowland-Smith said. “You go into the fifth inning 0-0 and guys can get a little tight. Having a couple of runs let me settle in, but it helped all of us.”
Ichiro Suzuki led off the Mariners’ first inning with his 203rd hit of the season, his 30th double, and scored when Jose Lopez doubled to pick up his 88th RBI. Adrian Beltre singled Lopez home, and Rowland-Smith was up, 2-0.
“I give my best effort every game, so it’s not like I did something special for Ryan,” Ichiro said. “But I know he’s been pitching awfully well, and he’s a player who keeps his emotions under control, it was a pleasure to do something for him.”
Rowland-Smith came back with an 11-pitch second inning, and the Mariners rewarded him again. Kenji Johjima doubled and Ryan Langerhans got him home with a sacrifice fly.
“Nice situational hitting,” manager Don Wakamatsu said. “We get the double, (Mike) Carp gets him to third, Langerhans gets him in. That’s just a nice job of execution.”
After three innings, Rowland-Smith had required only 33 pitches, and in the fourth inning rookie Carp hit his first career big-league home run to put Seattle ahead, 4-0.
“It’s everything you ever dreamed it would be when you thought about hitting a home run in the majors,” Carp said.
Being a rookie, of course, Carp paid for that long ball.
Doing a postgame television interview, he got not just the cream pie in the face, but the ice cream pie. Upon entering the clubhouse, Ken Griffey Jr. threw Carp in a laundry cart, steered him into the showers and helped teammates pour beer on him.
“I loved it,” Carp confessed.
The White Sox couldn’t quite figure out how they were losing, let alone being shut out. They had seven hits in the first five innings, but hits didn’t produce runs.
That’s because Rowland-Smith was at his best – as were his teammates – with men on base. Rowland-Smith got a double play grounder in the second inning. Johjima threw out a would-be base-stealer in the third.
And in the fifth inning, after Carlos Quentin dropped a pop fly single into right field, he slipped rounding first base – and Ichiro gunned him out.
Those kind of outs derailed potential rallies, and Chicago is a team that has seen its whole season go off the rails.
Once contenders in the American League Central, the White Sox began the night a game under .500 (72-73), and it only got worse for them in Safeco Field. Their starting pitcher, Gavin Floyd, gave up three runs before leaving after three innings with a tender hip.
Then they look up, and Rowland-Smith is starting the sixth inning having thrown only 64 pitches.
“He pitched good,” manager Ozzie Guillen said. “When you go seven innings and don’t score any runs, that’s pretty tough.”
Rowland-Smith was economical without a dominant pitch. He simply threw most everything in his arsenal for strikes and let the White Sox sort it out. As much as anything, what the Australian lefty has going for him right now is confidence – and with good reason.
“He’s learning the knack for getting deep into games,” Wakamatsu said. “He look so poised tonight. I’m proud of him, for going to Tacoma earlier this year and working so hard. It’s paid off, and he’s been phenomenal.”
Over his last four starts, his record is 2-2, but Rowland-Smith may never have pitched better in his career.
In those four games he’s gone 30 innings and allowed 10 runs, never more than three in a game. The two losses in that span? Shutouts administered by the Athletics and the Angels.
This time, Rowland-Smith went eight innings and threw 116 pitches, taking a shutout into the eighth inning before third baseman Gordon Beckham hit a solo home run.
“What I’ll remember most about tonight is coming in after the seventh inning with 106 pitches and having Wak let me go back out there,” Rowland-Smith said.
All scoring a run did for the White Sox was get them David Aardsma in the ninth inning, which is not a good thing unless you’re the Seattle Mariners. Aardsma, hitting 96 mph on the Safeco Field radar gun, put Chicago down in order.
That’s 35 saves for the first-year closer, 75 wins for the Mariners .
larry.larue@thenewstribune.com
blogs.thenewstribune.com/mariners
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