Mariners Blog
Geoff Baker covers the Mariners for The Seattle Times. He provides daily coverage of the team throughout spring training, and during the season.
June 7, 2008 5:39 PM
M's wilt in the heat
Posted by Geoff Baker
ADDITIONAL NOTE (7:00 p.m.): From reading your comments today, it's apparent to me that some are misconstruing Jarrod Washburn as having rebelled against Bill Bavasi's no-towel/no-food/stand by your locker edict. Washburn has been amongst the most accountable of any M's players this year when it comes to standing up in front of the media. For him to "rebel" against such an edict makes no sense. The whole purpose of the no-towel thing wasn't addressed in a clubhouse meeting beforehand or anything. It was an instantaneous thing and several players, not sure what was happening, intitially headed off to the showers. Bavasi did spot Washburn toweling off with a t-shirt and ordered then that towels be distributed. But this was hardly defiance on Washburn's part. It was his getting dry in a confusing situation. Washburn has been accountable to the media since his arrival here. He is not part of that problem. I wrote the towel anectdote in an attempt at some humor. Hope this clears things up a bit. Sorry if I wrote it in a way that misled any of you.
5:39 p.m.: Like a flower starved from a lack of honeybee pollen, the Mariners turned a dark shade of brown over the final five innings and wound up crushed, 11-3, by the Boston Red Sox.
Boston piled on five runs in the eighth inning against Mark Lowe and Ryan Rowland-Smith, but the truth is, even when it was a four-run game before that, Seattle looked done. The M's had just two hits and no runs between the third and ninth innings and that won't get it done. The "real'' Red Sox -- meaning the ones with either Manny Ramirez or David Oritz or both in the lineup -- showed up today and the results were predictable.
Miguel Batista did his rollover act at Fenway Park, getting bounced just 4 1/3 innings in. Batista looked like a knuckleballer today, since his pitches were all over the place. He walked six. One was intentional, though it might have been another Ramirez homer had Batista actually tried to pitch to him again.
"That was the big problem with the game,'' said Batista, winless in his last five starts against Boston dating back to 2004. "I struggled with my command.''
Highlight of the day? Seeing knucklers Tim Wakefield and R.A. Dickey go at it. Wakefield was obviously the victor. Dickey threw the ball well enough aside from the home run crushed off him by J.D. Drew -- ending his streak of 14 consecutive scoreless innings.
"The three or four cruddy ones I threw, one of them happened to be that pitch,'' Dickey said of knuckler Drew hit out.
But his other pitches were good enough that the debate will likely flare up amongst the team's coaching staff about whether Dickey should be in the rotation. Batista said he's feeling healthier, but still has some serious command issues going on.
We asked manager John McLaren about Dickey starting. "I'm not going there,'' he said, adding that Dickey "threw well today''.
Here you go, down below. Enjoy another video, this one a tour of Fenway Park and a trip atop the Green Monster. I fly into the city from Montreal, hop a cab to my hotel, then head off to the park and inside. Enjoy. Footage was taken yesterday, when it was a lot less sunny.

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