Mariners find way to win weary
LARRY LARUE; The News Tribune
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – Fly from the Northwest to the Southeast and there’s a chance a stowaway may slip aboard – physical exhaustion.
A five-hour flight wiped out David Aardsma’s back, puffed the knee of Ken Griffey Jr., left Jose Lopez feeling like an old man. None of that changed the Seattle Mariners’ philosophy a day after flying.
“As long as we’re going to have to play anyway, we might as well win,” Lopez said.
Never argue with the guy who hits the winning home run, in this case an eighth-inning solo shot that pushed Seattle past Tampa Bay, 4-3, and left the Mariners with 79 wins – exactly a year after they’d produced 57 in the same number of games.
“There’s no way you can deal with it physically,” outfielder Ichiro Suzuki said of the long flight. “You have to prepare for the mental side. That you can do.”
And Ichiro, whose two-run homer in the fifth inning figured large in this win, can do that?
“If I couldn’t, I wouldn’t have played here the last nine years,” he said.
Travel is a part of the game. And no one flies as often or as far as the Mariners, who pile up about 50,000 miles each season. They took their longest flight of the season Monday – to play two games against the Rays before heading for Toronto.
“Before the game, we knew we weren’t going to use (closer) David Aardsma,” manager Don Wakamatsu said. “His back just really stiffened up. He said he could go, but why risk it for one game and maybe lose him for the week?”
Still, knowing Aardsma wasn’t available for the ninth inning made Wakamatsu manage a different game.
He tried to get a dead-tired Ryan Rowland-Smith through the sixth inning. He used veteran Miguel Batista in the seventh, then brought him back for the eighth inning. And in the ninth – after Lopez had hit his 25th home run of the season to put Seattle ahead – Wakamatsu went with Mark Lowe.
“I thought I threw my first two pitches pretty well and I was behind in the count, 2-0,” Lowe said. “I thought, ‘This could be a long night.’ ”
It got better, and he struck out Evan Longoria with the tying run on base to end it, earning his third save.
The Mariners rarely complain about their travel schedule, though they do joke about it at times. When Wakamatsu was asked how far the roughly 2,500-mile trip from Seattle had been, he deadpanned “about 5,000 miles.”
Coming off a string of four marvelous starts in which he’d gone no fewer than seven innings and twice pitched eight, Rowland-Smith never seemed as sharp Tuesday – and he didn’t have a lot of luck, either.
He pitched around a first-inning single and walk, then almost didn’t make it out of the second inning.
Three soft hits – one that went off Rowland-Smith’s glove – and one line drive produced a Tampa Bay run. That wasn’t bad, but Rowland-Smith threw so many pitches that whatever he did have when the game started was drained.
“I really threw a lot of pitches early in the game and it cost me,” Rowland-Smith said. “After that, I just tried to go as far as I could go.”
When the Mariners rallied behind him – Adrian Beltre’s RBI single and a two-run homer from Ichiro – they were ahead after five innings, 3-1. And Rowland-Smith? He’d retired nine men in a row.
There wouldn’t be a 10th.
In quick succession to open the sixth inning, the big lefty walked Pat Burrell, gave up Willy Aybar’s double and walked Dioner Navarro to load the bases with no one out.
“After five innings, I told myself I could go six,” Rowland-Smith said. “I got ahead of myself a little.”
Reliever Shawn Kelley got out of the jam allowing two runs to score, one on a fly ball, to tie the game. All things considered, it wasn’t a bad job of pitching – but it did cost Rowland-Smith any chance to win his fifth game.
Instead, Batista wound up winning his seventh when Lopez homered in the eighth.
“I needed a back adjustment before the game, and there were a lot of us lined up for one,” Batista said. “Mine was as bad as Aardsma’s. There are a lot of guys on this team trying to finish strong, for the team and to get people to notice them.”
And Batista?
“I might be pitching to get a job somewhere next season,” he said, laughing.
Lopez is putting up career numbers and doesn’t intend to stop until the final game of the year is over.
“I want to play every game, win every game,” he said. “If we’re down a run, maybe tied, I’ll try to hit the ball a little harder. Not a home run, but hit it hard.”
In the eighth inning, game tied, he hit one hard, and now has 25 home runs – eight more than his previous single-season best – and a career-high 92 RBI. And that wasn’t the best part. What was?
“Going around the bases and thinking how the guys were going to be in the dugout when I got there,” Lopez said.
larry.larue@thenewstribune.com
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