Texas enjoys Seattle's breeze

With 11 games to go in their season, the Seattle Mariners are on the threshold of an American League record one would never expect of a team that doesn’t rely on power – but one they can reach.

If they swing, miss and take enough called third strikes.

By virtue of their 8-7 loss to the Texas Rangers at Safeco Field on Saturday, which included 13 strikeouts, the Mariners blew past the single-season franchise record for strikeouts (1,174), raising the record to 1,187.

Now, with 11 games remaining in 2011, they must average nearly 10 strikeouts a game to break the AL record (1,292) established last year by the Tampa Bay Rays.

History awaits.

“We are striking out a lot right now, but once you see these kids settle in you’re going to see less of that,” manager Eric Wedge said. You’ll see more discipline, see more walks …”

But probably not until next year.

Texas and Seattle almost always seem to get into these high-scoring, back-and-forth games two or three times a year, the kind where the team with the last at-bat has an edge.

And early on in this one, it seemed the Rangers and Mariners were headed that way.

Seattle went ahead in the second inning, 4-1, before starting pitcher Anthony Vazquez gave up not one, not two, but three solo home runs in the third inning to tie the game.

“I had my mind set on going out there and attacking, considering we’d just put four runs on the board,” the rookie said. “The last thing I wanted to do was fall behind hitters. They took advantage of it.

“I was successful the first couple of innings. They snuck that one run in the second inning, but I really went out there to attack. You never think they’ll put balls out of the park that easy, but they did it.”

Elvis Andrus and Josh Hamilton went deep back-to-back, Vasquez got an out, then served up No. 26 to ex-Mariners infielder Adrian Beltre and it was 4-4.

The Rangers scored three more runs in the fourth inning to go up 7-4, and in the fifth, first baseman Mike Carp hit his 10th home run with a man aboard, making it 7-6 with four innings to play.

Who knew the scoring was over for the night?

“Their bullpen really shut us down, it did a great job against us,” Carp said. “We’d been swinging pretty well lately, and in a close game, we thought we’d get them. I thought we were going to pull one out. We didn’t get the big hit.”

In fact, after Carp’s home run, the Mariners didn’t get much contact.

Of its final 12 outs, Seattle made seven by strikeout.

With Casper Wells (flu) and Brendan Ryan (stiff neck) unavailable, the Mariners’ lineup was heavily left-handed – the first five men in Wedge’s lineup were lefties.

So when manager Ron Washington pulled starter Colby Lewis in the sixth ining, he went with left-handed veteran Darren Oliver for the next 1 innings.

Oliver struck out Ichiro, Kyle Seager and Dustin Ackley, in order.

With a save situation in the ninth, the Rangers went to Neftali Perez. The Mariners might just as well have called it a night right then.

Against closer Perez, Seattle batters are a collective 0-for-42, all-time. They not only have never managed a hit against him, they’ve only drawn three walks – and struck out 19 times.

Perez struck out Luis Rodriguez, got Trayvon Robinson on a ground ball. Down to the final out, Wedge sent up a pinch-hitter – rookie Alex Liddi, who had eight big-league at-bats to his credit.

Feliz’s first pitch to Liddi was 98 mph. His last was 99. And no, the kid didn’t hit any of them, striking out to end the game.

“It was a little hard, but it’s part of the game,” Liddi said of the pinch-hitting appearance. “I’d faced him before, in the minors. I hit him.”

Was there one pitch in the sequence Liddi thought he should have hit?

“The last one,” he said. “It was a strike. The others were down, but that was there.”

Wedge was fine with Liddi’s at-bat.

“He got his hacks in. The guy’s throwing 99-100 mph out there and a lot of these kids haven’t seen that,” Wedge said. “We’ve got a lot of young playing at a point in the year they haven’t played before.

“But no excuses. What I don’t want to see is called third strikes. We’re getting some pitches to hit, we’re fouling some pitches back that look like pretty good pitches to hit, but we need to get on them.

“We will.”

If not, they’re about to begin an 11-game march into history.

larry.larue@thenewstribune.com blog.thenewstribune.com/mariners