One Way or Another, Mariners' Arms Will Have Say in Playoff Race

SEATTLE -- There's no way you can figure on seeing the Mariners in the 2010 postseason.

Even after winning four games in succession, including a three-game sweep of the Reds after Cincinnati arrived in first place in the National League Central, the Mariners are still 13 games under .500 and light years away from contention in the American League West.

To take the Mariners lightly in the final 3 1/2 months of the season, however, would not be wise. They have just too much pitching. Or at least they will until the projected departure of Cliff Lee in a trade deadline deal.

In the last four games, the Mariners have allowed two runs. Twice they've won 1-0, including Sunday's win by that score over the Reds behind fifth starter Ryan Rowland-Smith, a left-hander who hadn't won all year but who has a history of pitching well in the second half.

Before that, Lee and Felix Hernandez, as good a 1-2 punch as any team in baseball has, combined to allow 11 hits and one run in back-to-back complete game wins.

Last Wednesday in St. Louis, unheralded Jason Vargas continued to surprise, winning 6-1 with his 11th quality start in his last 12 games. Next week in Milwaukee, Doug Fister, whose 2.45 ERA was among the best in the league before shoulder fatigue got to him, returns from the disabled list.

"There is plenty of season left, plenty of games left,'' Rowland-Smith said after throwing six scoreless against the Reds, allowing three hits but five walks. "And we're starting to come together.''



Share Seattle doesn't have much of an offense -- did we mention that two wins in the current streak were by 1-0 scores? -- so there will be times when even strong quality pitching efforts will go for naught. But the Mariners have a chance now to throw a quality starter out every day, all the more so when lefty Erik Bedard comes of the disabled list, expected next month.

Four days don't make a season. They certainly haven't made the Mariners' 2010. But what happened to Cincinnati can happen to anybody when the Seattle pitchers are on the mark.

"It was a nightmare weekend as far as scoring runs,'' Cincinnati manager Dusty Baker said. "We couldn't buy a run, and it didn't look like they were for sale.''

The Mariners got beat up on a just-completed 20-games-in-20-days stretch, going 7-13. Those three weeks are being followed by three off days in the space of 12 days. That's allowed pitching coach Rick Adair and manager Don Wakamatsu to load up. The Reds saw both Lee and Hernandez. The Cubs will see both aces, too, in the final two games of a three-game series that starts Tuesday.

"We couldn't buy a run, and it didn't look like they were for sale."
-- Reds manager Dusty Baker on facing Seattle's pitching Then the Yankees will get both in the first two games in the Bronx next week.

And these are pitchers who can beat anybody at any time. Hernandez was the runner-up to Kansas City's Zack Greinke in the Cy Young voting last year and Lee won the Cy Young two years ago pitching for the Indians.

Lee is in a stretch where he has walked four batters in 10 games while striking out 67, a 16.75-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio that is the best in the big leagues. He's given up two runs or less seven times in 10 starts and only a miserable offense has kept his record at a modest 5-3.

It was about this time that Hernandez took off last year en route to a 19-5 season. He's 3-1 this month, he's allowed two earned runs or less in six of his last eight starts and he says he's starting to get that 2009 feeling back again.

The problem for the Mariners is, of course, holding on to Lee. Right now it seems about as likely as holding on to a summer breeze. A last-place club without offensive credentials needs help, and he can bring that if the Mariners can find a trading partner with a loaded minor-league system. The Mariners are stacked at Double-A, a group that should land in the Pacific Northwest in 2012.

From Seattle's point of view, if 2010 and 2011 are going to be write-offs, the best scenario would be the addition of two or three top-end Double-A players who might have a chance to be impact players.

Right now, however, general manager Jack Zduriencik doesn't want to go down that path. He talks about getting back into the race, saying that as bad as things are, there is still time for a turnaround.

Last week that talk seemed ludicrous.

After two runs allowed in 36 innings, it still seems far-fetched, but no longer laughable.

That's what pitching will do for you.