Bedard struck out eight with no walks in five innings
Welcome to small ball. Building off their Opening Day win against the Minnesota Twins, the Mariners continued their success of moving runners over but couldn't hold their lead in the ninth.
In his first appearance of 2009 as the closer, Brandon Morrow hit 98 mph on the radar gun but walked the bases loaded with two outs before manager Don Wakamatsu brought in Miguel Batista.
Batista allowed back-to-back hits to Denard Span and Alexi Casilla, scoring three runs in the bottom of the ninth and ending the game 6-5.
To Continue...
Endy Chavez led off the game with a single, Franklin Gutierrez doubled moving Chavez to third and after a Ken Griffey Jr. pop out, Adrian Beltre hit a sacrifice fly scoring Chavez.
It was more of the same in the third and just enough for starting pitcher Erik Bedard, who was throwing all of his pitches for strikes with tremendous composure, until the fifth inning.
Bedard gave up a lead-off triple to Carlos Gomez, struck out catcher Jose Morales then hit Nick Punto.
Right fielder Span, who was 3-for-5, singled to right scoring Gomez and moving Punto to third. Span stole second then Bedard struck out Casilla.
Twins designated hitter Micheal Cuddyer singled to center scoring Punto and Span. Justin Morneau struck out stranding Cuddyer at first.
It took Bedard 31 pitches to get out of the inning. He hadn't thrown more than 19 pitches in any other previous inning.
The majority of Seattle's runs came early. After a one-out single in the third Chavez stole second on the first pitch to Gutierrez who would ground out to the short stop later in the at bat. Twins pitcher Nick Blackburn walked Griffey and on the first pitch to Beltre he shot a single to center scoring Chavez.
If Chavez hadn't stolen second Gutierrez's ground-out would have been nothing more than a double play, ending the inning.
Aggressive base running in the fourth manufactured two more runs. Wladimir Balentien moved from first to third on Yuneski Betancourt's single. Betancourt moved to second on the throw. Both would score on Chavez's single to right.
Betancourt flashed some serious leather in the seventh to rob Punto of a base hit by laying out Superman-style to snatch the line-drive out of the air.
Coming into relief for Bedard, Roy Corcoran threw two perfect innings, striking out two.
In the eigth David Aardsma in his Mariner debut had a perfect 1-2-3 inning, striking out Cuddyer.
Reach Josh Stilts at nextseasonsports@gmail.com
