Justin Smoak walked through the Seattle clubhouse Sunday looking like he’d run into two or three doors – his face puffy, his eyes blackened, his nose red and raw.
“I’ve taken bad hops before, but they don’t always square you up like that,” Smoak said of the ball that attacked him Friday. “It hit the bill of my cap first, and the doctors said that was a good thing. I tried to get out of the way but it didn’t do me any good.”
Smoak is now on the 15-day disabled list with a broken nose and minor fracture beneath his left eye.
“I’m not allowed to sneeze or blow my nose,” he said.
“I didn’t think it was that big a deal. The ball hit me and I broke my nose. Then they gave me a CT-scan and X-rays and I started to wonder.”
Smoak will begin light baseball activities within a week.
“We’ll get him throwing the ball, but not taking ground balls for awhile yet,” manager Eric Wedge said.
THE POWER OF PEA
Told about the prodigious long balls new Mariners batter Wily Mo Peña hit in practice Saturday, Wedge said he’d seen Peña’s power up close and personal when his Cleveland team faced Boston in Fenway Park.
“Peña hit a ball off the Green Monster in Fenway – hit it so hard that the shortstop turned around and fielded the ball on one hop,” Wedge said. “That’s power.”
Peña collected his first hit with Seattle on Sunday, a double that short-hopped the wall in left field.
HOT HITTERS
The Mariners are a team of streakers, and they kept it going Sunday.
Franklin Gutierrez pushed his hitting streak to seven games, during which he’s batted .462 and pulled his season average to .222.
Ichiro Suzuki had a pair of hits and now has a 10-game hitting streak, his second double-digit streak of the season. His average climbed to .269.
And rookie Mike Carp extended his streak to 14 games with an RBI single. During the streak, he’s batted .368 with 16 RBI, and for the season he’s at .320 with 24 RBI in 38 games.
SHORT HOPS
Casper Wells likes Safeco Field. Since being acquired from Detroit in the Doug Fister deal, he’s hit safely in all six home games in which he’s played – and homered in three of the past four games at home. … Carp has 24 RBI in his last 23 games, and the last Mariners rookie to have a comparable stretch was Danny Tartabull in 1986. Tartabull had 24 RBI in 22 games that season. … Ichiro’s assist Saturday on that collision at the plate between Jacoby Ellsbury and Josh Bard was the 97th of his career. That tied him with Jay Buhner for the second-most outfield assists in franchise history. The leader? Ken Griffey Jr. with 108.
ON TAP
Seattle plays host to Toronto tonight at 7:10 in a game that will be televised on Root Sports. Probable starting pitchers: Henderson Alvarez (0-0, 4.76 ERA) vs. Michael Pineda (9-7, 3.57).
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