That 5-4 win over the Chicago White Sox was a lot tougher than it should have been . The Chisox seemed disinterested until Miguel Batista issued those three consecutive walks in the seventh and George Sherrill allowed the grand slam -- to recent Class AAA call-up Danny Richar. You can't blame John McLaren for going to his situational lefty in that situation, since it was clearly going to be the last shot Chicago had at getting back into the game.

Sherrill owns lefty hitters, Richar has been in the big leagues three weeks, was 2-for-his-last-24 at the plate and Batista was at 109 pitches and had just walked three in a row. So naturally, Richar takes Sherrill deep. It wasn't a cheapie, either. Richar got all of the 2-2 offering.

Mariners manager John McLaren declared the game "a little too close for comfort" and said the five consecutive fastballs Sherrill threw to Ricar was not a sequence he liked.

"I thought we showed him too many fastballs,'' he said. "I think we threw five fastballs in a row to him,. I just thought we should throw him something else. Change speeds, change his eye-level for something.''

Hear some McLaren audio right here.

McLaren mentions Jose Guillen in the clip. Guillen made that mad dash home from second base on the infield chopper by Adrian Beltre to score the game's decisive run in the fifth. But after the top of the eighth, he jogged in from right field and headed for the clubhouse complaining of dizziness. No one knows for sure what caused it. Guillen wasn't around for questions afterwards, but McLaren saw him and says he's feeling OK. We'll see how that goes.

McLaren was asked by reporters whether the bullpen is showing signs of wearing down what with the recent spate of home runs allowed by the previously near-perfect tandem of Sherrill and J.J. Putz. McLaren said he doesn't think so at all and that both were well-rested heading in.

The decision to replace Brandon Morrow with Putz in with two out in the eighth was based on hitter-pitcher matchups between him and Darin Erstad and Scott Podsednik. Erstad was 1-for-5 before notching a single, while Podsednik was 0-for-1. McLaren isn't all that concerned with using Putz to get an extra out here and there in the eighth.

"I just felt like, the way things were going, we had to slam the door,'' McLaren said. "And J.J. did. When he's well rested I don't mind using him for an inning and a third. It's when you use him three days in a row and then use him an inning and a third, and all of a sudden you've got to use him an inning and a third the next night.

"We're staying guarded against that. But when he's well rested I don't think there's anything wrong with using him an inning and a third. In fact, I think he likes it on occasion to stretch him out a little bit.''

Hear all of what McLaren had to say.

A three-hit night for Raul Ibanez, who now has seven homers in 10 games and hitting .583 (7-for-12) off Jose Contreras in his career. Anyone think Ibanez should be benched? Me neither. Homered on his bobblehead night as well.

Ditto for Jose Vidro, tying that obscure team record with five sacrifice flies in the month of August. He talked afterwards about the importance of all the little things the team did right tonight.

"If you look at most of our wins, every run really, really comes into play at the end,'' Vidro said. "We've been blessed with a great bullpen that most of the time has been picking us up.''

Listen to Vidro right here.

That was a nice sacrifice bunt by Ichiro to get Yuniesky Betancourt over to third base so Vidro could get him in with the sac fly. McLaren confirmed that Ichiro did the bunt on his own -- he'd prefer him to try for a hit. Ichiro actually was trying to beat the bunt out for an infield single but did not succeed.

Batista comes away with win No. 13. Did his job, again allowing no more than three earned runs after taking the game into the seventh with a 5-0 lead. Around the fifth, a problem with biceps tightness began to flare up. It's been a lingering problem he and the team have monitored all season with no real concerns. It bothered him a little and may have led to those three walks we saw.

Hear some Batista audio.

More importantly than all the stats, the M's gain a half-game on the Angels, drawing to within three of the AL West lead. They are also still a half-game up on New York in the wild-card hunt.

Jose Contreras? If this really was an "audition" he could not have possibly made things any more difficult on M's management. I mean, how do you judge this outing? Gets clobbered early on, giving up all those extra-base hits, but then keeps his team in it through seven -- allowing just four earned runs. What a mixed bag that was. But is there more in the bag than Horacio Ramirez brings? At $20 million for two more years? I wouldn't want to be the one making this call. Here are some more things to ponder: Last eight starts, Contreras is 0-8 with a 9.59 ERA. Last 12 starts, he is 1-11 with an 8.52 ERA. But he does get the decision, I'll give him that. Though when the decisions are all losses with an ERA that high, it usually tells you the games are over quick.

My things have changed in a hurry. Where on Earth did those three straight walks come from? Same place they happened for Batista in Toronto last month. Remember that one, when he walked the bases loaded with none out before managing to escape? Not this time, since his pitch count was too high to let him finish what he started. I liked George Sherrill's chances against pop-gun hitting Danny Richar -- until I saw that grand slam sail over the right field wall.

So, it's now a 5-4 game, the M's still ahead, as we enter the eighth. I'll say one thing about Jose Contreras. He just gave his team seven innings in a game that looked hopeless for his squad not too long ago. Something to consider.

M'S CRUISING

This hasn't been much of a contest for the Mariners, up 5-0 in the bottom of the sixth. Jose Contreras has given up nine hits in five innings -- five of them for extra bases. His defense hasn't looked all that good behind him at times. White Sox GM Kenny Williams was sitting just behind us in the back row of the pressbox and slammed his fist down on the table in front of him after one of several soft groundouts by his team against Miguel Batista. Williams didn't seem to be doing much talking on his cellphone. Maybe folks are taking a pass on Contreras. Then again, Williams left a couple of innings ago, so maybe he's holed up somewhere with Bill Bavasi? Who knows?

Batista's been his usual stickler self with men on base. Chicago is 0-for-9 with a walk once a runner gets on.

CONTRERAS FIZZLING EARLY

Well, I'll say this for Jose Conteras. He looks like a perfect replacement for Horacio Ramirez. It would be such a seamless transition, you'd never realize Ho-Ram was even gone. Anyway, quick, somebody pull Raul Ibanez out of there before he regresses to the mean. It's 2-0 for the M's over the Chicago White Sox, courtesy of Ibanez's two-run homer. I dunno about that Contreras dude. A homer and two doubles allowed in one inning so far. Maybe we should forget about him and push the Mariners to get that Eric Gagne guy for the eighth. Whaddya all think? Hey, he could come cheap...

JONES OUT; AUMONT SPEAKS

Back to playing baseball again. Guess who isn't in tonight's lineup? I'll give you a hint. We've been discussing him the past two days. To answer a question below about Jose Contreras, I'm told the Dodgers have a scout here tonight to see him as well. My contacts in Chicago tell me the White Sox are prepared to budge on eating some salary (he's owed $20 million over the next two years) more than they had been before the July 31 trade deadline. I talked to Horacio Ramirez today and he's trying to ignore all the talk about Contreras. Ramirez said he knows he's been lousy, but figures a couple of bad breaks have made him look worse than he is. He's convinced he can do a whole lot more. We'll see if the team can swallow that. If Contreras pitches well tonight, it might be hard for the Mariners to lay off unless the Chisox get very greedy about money.

CHICAGO (54-66)

CF Jerry Owens
3B Josh Fields
DH Jim Thome
RF Jermaine Dye
C A.J. Pierzynski
1B Darrin Erstad
LF Scott Podsednik
SS Juan Uribe
2B Danny Richer

RHP Jose Contreras

SEATTLE (66-52)

CF Ichiro
DH Jose Vidro
RF Jose Guillen
LF Raul Ibanez
3B Adrian Beltre
1B Richie Sexson
C Kenji Johjima
2B Jose Lopez
SS Yuniesky Betancourt

RHP Miguel Batista

UMPIRES

HP Ron Kulpa
1B Paul Emmel
2B Dan Iassonga
3B Dale Scott (crew chief)

A real lefty-stacked lineup (everyone but Fields, Dye and Uribe) put out by the Chisox against Batista, going for his 13th victory tonight. Lefties are hitting .297 off Batista, compared to .254 by righties.

Here's a little audio sampling from today's press conference with No. 1 draft pick Phillippe Aumont at Safeco Field. The first voice you'll hear is scouting director Bob Fontaine, who was seated next to signing scout Wayne Norton at the head table. Fontaine is very excited about the upside for Aumont, a 6-foot-7, 18-year-old from Quebec who looks at least 25.

Aumont throws a 94 mph sinker and the M's are drooling over the possibilities once he develops further.

"In some ways, he hasn't had as much time to pitch as other kids in the States,'' Fontaine said. "But the competition that he's gone up against has been better than most kids based in the United States.''

That was during Aumont's stint with the Canadian National Team, which we all know is a baseball powerhouse -- beating the U.S. at the World Baseball Classic last year and at the 1999 Pan-Am Games. OK, maybe not a powerhouse. More like a powerboat. But you get the point. Aumont has faced some pro players. Fontaine told me later that the level of competition was equivalent to Rookie League ball and Aumont already has a year under his belt.

That's a big leg up. He'll pitch in some tournaments for the Canadian team in coming weeks, then head off to the Arizona Instructional League.

I asked Aumont to describe the difference in talent when he made the jump to the national team, compared to the senior league squads he'd been playing for because high school ball in Quebec is all but non-existent.

"The senior team, they're old guys,'' he said, speaking without a translator despite only learning English the past 18 months. "They just want to hit bombs. They just want to hit the ball as far as they can.

"Pro players, they work the count,'' he added. "They know what's going on.''

Nobody wanted to give a timeframe on Aumont arriving here. The best high school prospects can sometimes make it up in a couple of years. At this point, I'd put the M's most optimistic hopes at an in-season call-up in 2009 and maybe a shot at the team by 2010. That would still leave Aumont only 21. You can see why the Mariners are excited.

Listen to some of John McLaren's pre-game audio here. No, I didn't ask him about sitting Adam Jones. What's to ask? We covered the topic inside and out on this blog the past two days. Good job folks.

Ervin Santana and the Angels up 2-0 in the sixth on Josh Beckett and the Red Sox. Boston routed John Lackey and the Halos in Game 1 of today's doubleheader. Sometimes, baseball makes no sense. But that's why they play the games, right?

Looks like a beautiful morning unfolding (though we'll see in an hour) as the Mariners resume their playoff push. Jose Contreras pitching for the Chicago White Sox tonight and we all know what folks will be saying if he does the job against the M's. No, you don't know? Look in the encyclopedia under Ramirez, Horacio.

I'll get to the morning's topic in a moment, but answer a couple of questions first.

For "Faceplant" my guess is that veterans only have to prove themselves over a short period to "earn" their playing time back because they've done it before. The folks building the team know they've done it, expected them to do it and put them on the team in the first place because they needed them to do it. So, when they start doing it again after not doing it, everyone gets optimistic in a hurry. Very relieved too. Sometimes, it's just false hope and wishful thinking. Other times, it's just normalcy returning. And the team-builders will take that normalcy over the unknown, especially with six weeks to go in a season and a pennant race looming.

And by the way, folks, Jose Vidro's slugging percentage has been at .500 for the past month. That's not a tiny sample size, good enough for a DH and frankly, with only a short amount of season left, what Vidro has done the past month is a lot more relevant to the nightly lineup than what he did back in April, May and June. It's not about projections when you have just six weeks to go. Worry about numbers declining when they actually decline. It's about what's going on in front of a team's nose with the season winding down. No manager, be they John McLaren or John McGraw, would operate any differently.

For the other questions about Cha Seung Baek, once again, he's down in Peoria throwing simulated games and doing well at that. But then he still has to pitch in minor league games first and work his way up to a major league level. My guess on him being back in Seattle would be the second week of September at the earliest. He apparently was truly hurt and not impacted by the "need-to-improve-itis" that seemed to land other Mariners hurlers on the DL this summer. Think I'll spend today checking on whatever became of Sean White. Haven't seen him in months.

So, we all know Kelvim Escobar manhandled a Blue Jays club that was foolish not to re-sign him after 2003. That $8 million the Jays "saved" over three seasons by letting the Angels outbid them sure looks great now, doesn't it? Bought them a whole four months of A.J. Burnett. Whoopie! Escobar has a 1.57 ERA over his last eight starts and has thrust himself back into Cy Young contention. End result for the M's is a 3 1/2 game deficit in the AL West, meaning any more losses to teams they should be beating could push Seattle closer to that four-game threshold in the gap between them and the Halos. You really don't want to trail anyone by four or more this late in the year. The good news for the M's is that the Angels play a doubleheader in Boston today. Very unlikely the Angels sweep, with Ervin "The Road Worrier" Santana pitching the second game. Meaning a Mariner victory tonight likely gains them some ground.

The wild-card is looking far better right now, with Seattle now all alone in that race -- up by a half-game after the Yankees saw their pitching implode again. Two big opponents for Seattle, two very different ways of self-destructing. The Yanks score runs by the plane load but can't pitch. And the Angels pitch gems more often than not, but can't score enough runs.

Some of you have mentioned the "grass isn't always greener" theory about how the Angels and their fans are panicking about the M's. Well, you'll be happy to know insecurity reigns in the Bronx as well. Check out this blog.

Man, he gets to the point quickly, doesn't he? Not like these rambling posts. Anyway, on to my topic of the day. Some of you may have read today's Miguel Batista feature penned by yours truly. But I wanted to discuss Batista some more here. Having covered him in Toronto as a starter in a pretty disastrous 2004, I never dreamed I'd see him with a shot at becoming a 15-game winner in the AL.

But that's a serious possibility now. There are some obvious reasons for it. The infield defense in Seattle is superior to anything Batista has ever pitched in front of. Yes, he had Orlando Hudson at second base in Toronto and Arizona from 2004 through 2006, but the shortstops and third baseman weren't always major league caliber defenders for him. Not so here, where Adrian Beltre and Yuniesky Betancourt had Batista dreaming of a season like this one way back before spring training.

A great FoxSports.com story on the M's this week -- perhaps the funniest and most accurate depiction of this crazy Seattle playoff run by a national media outlet thus far -- cited Horacio Ramirez as the "poster child" for this mediocre stats, great results season. I'll agree that Ramirez's 7-3 (now 7-4) record at the time with truly sub-par peripherals is a wacky thing to behold.

But Batista has taken some highly bizarre numbers to some stunning win totals. And it isn't all due to park factors and defense.

Look at Batista's walks-plus-hit-to-innings-pitched (WHIP) stat of 1.51 and it doesn't scream 12-game winner. In fact, no other 12-game winner in baseball has a WHIP that bad. Of the 36 pitchers with enough innings logged to qualify for the league's ERA title, Batista's WHIP ranks 32nd.

Normally, a WHIP that poor translates to a worse season. Like what? Here are some examples, looking down at the five worst WHIP scores in the AL.

1.49 Boof Bonser... 5-9...4.77
1.51 MIGUEL BATISTA...12-8, 4.13
1.60 Jorge De La Rosa...8-11, 5.46
1.62 Jose Contreras...6-14, 6.24
1.62 Steve Trachsel...5-7, 4.85
1.67 Odalis Perez...7-11, 5.78

Obviously, a better over-all record for Batista than the other guys. No, it's not all ballpark-related, though Batista has certainly benefitted from Safeco's status as a pitcher's park. Here are the ERA+ scores of the pitchers with the five worst WHIP totals in the AL. Remember, a score of 100 is deemed "average" while anything higher is "above average" and below is "below average."

Boof Bonser -- 92
MIGUEL BATISTA -- 103
Jorge De La Rosa -- 87
Jose Contreras -- 73
Steve Trachsel -- 91
Odalis Perez -- 82

Once again, Batista is the only one even close to being above average. His high-wire act has certainly been a thing to behold. And his ERA really isn't all that impressive, perhaps hurt by the fact that he rarely pitches seven or more innings. Here's a look at the AL pitchers who've won 12 or more games and the number of outings in which they've gone seven or more innings.

C.C. Sabathia -- 17
Fausto Carmona -- 16
Kelvim Escobar -- 16
Roy Halladay -- 15
Johan Santana -- 15
Dan Haren -- 14
Erik Bedard -- 13
Daisuke Matsuzaka -- 13
John Lackey -- 12
Josh Beckett -- 11
Justin Verlander -- 11
Tim Wakefield -- 9
Chien-Ming Wang -- 9
MIGUEL BATISTA -- 4

Wow. As you can see, Batista's four outings of seven or more innings is actually five lower than the next-worst total on that list. That's some pretty exclusive company he keeps for a guy who can't get beyond the seventh. How would it impact his ERA? Well, let's assume his stints of seven-plus innings were at the median total of 13 instead of his present four. That's a difference of nine and if he works an extra inning in each of those, his ERA falls from 4.13 to a much nicer-looking 3.88. Add in a couple of eight-inning starts and the ERA would be in the 3.80 range.

Besides impacting his ERA, the inability to go seven-plus innings would also really seem likely to hurt Batista's ability to win games. So, how does he do it? Is it all his bullpen? Well, partially, though Seattle starters with near-identical or superior ERA and ERA+ numbers -- Jarrod Washburn and Felix Hernandez -- both have four fewer victories (possibly five fewer after tonight). It isn't all bullpen, it isn't all defense and it isn't all park factors.

As we mentioned in today's feature, Batista has an uncanny ability to allow tons of baserunners, while preventing them from scoring.

Opponents have a .344 on-base percentage against Batista with the bases empty, a very good total for the hitters. But with runners at first and second, that on-base total plummets to .257. Opponents' OPS against Batista with the bases empty is .808, but falls to .728 once runners get on, and .719 with runners in scoring position. The drop in OPS is almost entirely due to slugging percentage, meaning that while Batista still may allow even more runners in such cases, he's less likely to yield the game-wrecking extra-base hit that someone like Ramirez has all season long.

Now, let's take one more look at that list of 12-game winners and see how many times they've allowed three earned runs or less in a game this season.

Dan Haren -- 25
Fausto Carmona -- 21
Erik Bedard -- 21
Johan Santana -- 20
John Lackey -- 20
Kelvim Escobar -- 19
C.C. Sabathia -- 19
MIGUEL BATISTA -- 18
Justin Verlander -- 18
Daisuke Matsuzaka -- 17
Josh Beckett -- 17
Roy Halladay -- 15
Chien-Ming Wang -- 14
Tim Wakefield -- 13

As you can see, Batista's totals fit very nicely on that list of the AL's top pitchers. A long-winded way of me showing that numbers can sometimes be hidden. Yes, there is nothing spectacular about Batista's ERA or his ability to go deep in games. But don't let anyone tell you his season has been ordinary. As you can see, there is nothing usual about the way he has gone about posting his numbers.