Jamie Burke's blast leads M's 7-1 over Rays

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — A cheating heart gripped Jamie Burke as he watched his potential home run blast drift just foul in the eighth inning of yet another tight ballgame.

Burke had spent his entire at-bat getting "busted inside" by Tampa Bay Rays reliever J.P. Howell, but noticed that the pitches kept inching closer to the plate. After barely missing a game-breaking homer, Burke figured it wouldn't hurt to cheat and guess that the ensuing Howell offering, with the count full, would again be inside and a little closer to the strike zone.

The guesswork paid off as Burke deposited the ensuing pitch into the left field seats for a three-run homer that blew the game open for an eventual 7-1 win Wednesday. For the first time all season, the Mariners were able to send in their bullpen in for a non-save situation in which every pitch didn't have to be with the game on the line.

"I was probably guessing more than anything and was able to keep it fair," said Burke, told earlier in the day at the team's hotel that he'd be starting at catcher in place of slumping Kenji Johjima.

A little cheating can sometimes go a long way for teams struggling to win with more conventional methods. The first two-game winning streak by Seattle, secured in front of 12,106 fans at Tropicana Field, came with the usual assortment of runners left on base, errors in the field and a starting pitcher needing to fight tooth and nail to protect a lead.

But Jarrod Washburn did his own bit of inside pitching on the Rays, holding them to just one run over seven innings as his team clung to a 4-1 lead. Adrian Beltre also homered for the Mariners and Burke helped come to the rescue in the seventh, blocking the plate on a strong throw home by left fielder Raul Ibanez to nab Willy Aybar attempting to score from second on a single.

"The ball was driven hard, but it was right at Raul and he made a perfect throw," Burke said of the one-hopper, which skipped hard on the artificial turf. "My main focus was catching the ball. If I got run over, I got run over."

The only ones getting run over in this game were the Rays once Burke's first home run of the season cleared the wall. Burke didn't notch his first and only homer of 2007 until the final day of the season.

"It was nice to put some runs on the board," Mariners manager John McLaren said after his team improved to 4-5. "It gave us a bit of a breather."

Ryan Rowland-Smith worked the eighth and Sean Green the ninth without all the pressure they and their bullpen colleagues have faced so far this season.

The Mariners will have Miguel Batista on the mound this afternoon as they attempt a sweep that would get them back to .500 in time for this weekend's series with the division-leading Angels.

Washburn improved to 11-3 lifetime with a 2.60 earned run average in 16 starts against the Rays, including 6-1 with a 1.89 ERA at Tropicana Field. He'd noticed the Rays being very aggressive at the plate in Tuesday's series opener and figured it might help him go deeper in the game.

"They are an aggressive team," he said. "They have a lot of guys in the lineup that can swing good. I knew if I made some early pitches, down in the middle of the zone, that they'd be aggressive."

The quick-swinging Rays enabled Washburn to breeze through five innings on 75 pitches and eventually go seven — something he rarely did last season. The Mariners built a 2-0 lead off Rays starter Andy Sonnanstine in the third, when Burke and Yuniesky Betancourt singled, followed by a run-scoring double from Ichiro and a sacrifice fly by Jose Lopez.

The Mariners could have had more, but stranded some runners and saw the Rays cut the lead to 2-1 in the bottom of the frame. Beltre's homer off Sonnanstine made it 3-1 in the fifth and the Mariners added a run in the sixth, but also saw Burke pop out with runners at the corners and none out in a rally that died on an ensuing Betancourt double-play.

"It was a big situation right there, with runners at first and third," Burke said. "Obviously you want to keep the ball in the air. He gave me a good pitch to put in the air but unfortunately I put it in the air to the first or second baseman.

"You look back at things but you can't look back at the negative side," he added. "You've just got to go out there, if you get another chance, and try to do your job."

As the Mariners have done the past two nights.

Geoff Baker: 206-464-8286 or gbaker@seattletimes.com.