Pitching, Defense, Clutch Hitting

Tonight John Jaso batted leadoff, only the 2nd Mariners catcher to do so.  The last was in 1978!  Well, it ended up paying off as Jaso once again came through in the clutch and the Mariners beat Detroit 2-1 in just over two hours.

Vargas was absolutely stellar, again.

Tigers (15-14)

Jackson CF

Boesch RF

Cabrera 3B

Fielder 1B

Young DH

Raburn LF

Peralta SS

Laird C

Worth 2B

Smyly (1-0, 1.61)

Mariners (14-18)

Jaso C

Ryan SS

Ichiro RF

Montero DH

Seager 2B

Smoak 1B

Liddi 3B

Wells LF

Figgins CF

Vargas (3-2,3.09)

I bet Detroit will be glad to not see us until 2013, as we went 5-1 against them this year, losing only yesterday's game.

We were only able to muster 4 hits, but we made them count.  Ichiro singled in the 4th, stole second, then came around on an RBI double by Seager which almost went out of the ballpark. Ichiro's single put him at #100 on the all-time hits list.

Vargas, meanwhile, was only in trouble once the whole night.  Sporting a 1-0 lead he gave up a leadoff double to Laird.  Worth followed with a single to advance him to third.  Jackson then got Detroit their only run of the game via a sacrifice fly.  Boesch followed with a single but Vargas was able to get out of trouble by inducing a 4-6-3 double play.  There were about three or four absolutely fantastic defensive plays by Ryan tonight, including a barehanded grab to end the third.  Even if he isn't hitting right now, at least he is flashing a gold glove worthy defense.  One of the plays essentially ended the game, but more on that later.

After Vargas got out of the sixth, he retired the next six batters to finish the 8th with an efficient 90 pitches.  In my opinion he should have probably come back out in the ninth inning, but Wedge doesn't like to play that way.  The score was tied 1-1, and Saunders pinch hit for Wells to lead off the bottom of the inning.  He hit a double to left field.  Figgins then laid down a sacrifice bunt, which brought up Jaso.  He hit a single to center field, scoring Saunders with the eventual winning run.  It feels like the 4th or 5th time already this year that he has produced a game winning RBI.  Unfortunately, Jaso got a little too excited and tried to stretch the single into a double and was thrown out at second.

League came in to close out the game, and proceeded to walk the leadoff man, Jackson, which meant that Boesch, Cabrera, and possibly Fielder were due up next.  Boesch hit an absolute laser to Ryan, who was able to knock the ball down and get the double play.  For a split second it looked like he had caught it, but it was hit too hard.  That turned to our favor, and we easily doubled them up.


The Mariners are now 5-5 when I attend, 2-2 in one run games!
Attendance: 15,655
Time of Game: 2:06