Another wasted start
You go with your friends to the bar, the club is packed, the music is great and a cute little number on the other end of the dance floor notices you. Then, just as your perfect night is coming to an end, the girl you’re taking home throws up in your face and you spend the rest of the night holding her hair back while she’s face deep in a toilet bowl.
That’s kind of like what Erik Bedard is going through in Seattle only much, much worse.
Bedard went seven strong, struck out five and gave up just two runs but still earned the loss, 2-0, against the Rangers. Seattle has now lost seven of its last eight games.
And he’s not the only pitcher with a lack of support. Geoff Baker points out in his cover that the starters have gone into the seventh inning or later 15 times this season and have just six wins to show for it. The team overall has won just eight times when the starts goes seven or more innings. Seattle is also 0-14 when scoring four or less runs.
Wednesday evening, Ichiro (1-for-3) and Yuniesky Betancourt (1-for-4) notched the Mariners’ only hits of the night. Seattle had a chance to come back in the seventh inning. Texas starter Vicente Padilla walked the first two hitters of the inning. But then Padilla fanned the next three, effectively killing the hopes of the 17, 000 plus people at the game who are already dead inside.
Ever the optimist, Baker, the beat writer for the Seattle Times, had a great observation in his cover of the game.
“We were a little bit behind the eight ball tonight,” McLaren said of his bench, which certainly could have used Vidro in the ninth. Vidro is mashing lefties to a .320 tune this season.
Then again, had Vidro been healthy, he likely would have started at first base instead of Miguel Cairo and not been available as a pinch-hitter. In other words, things are so bad for this team that even hypothetical situations are no longer working out Seattle’s way.
Right now, the only thing interesting about the Mariners is what Geoff Baker has to say about them the next day.