Notebook | Mariners hitting coach says now is not time to panic

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — No one is feeling the squeeze of an early season Mariners hitting drought more than the guy in charge of the team's bats.

But hitting coach Jeff Pentland says this is no time for panic, despite the fact he has three regulars batting .139 or worse and four of them at .206 or lower. The Mariners have seen a below-average percentage of balls they've put into play result in hits so far this season.

Pentland agrees that some of that is just bad luck, especially earlier on, when balls that were hit hard went right at fielders for outs. Lately though, he said, the balls just plain aren't being hit hard at all.

"We're not squaring it up," Pentland said. "My whole philosophy is, put the fat part of the bat on the ball."

Instead, the Mariners saw their bats sawed in half all series long by opposing pitchers in Baltimore. And they've had games like Thursday afternoon's 7-0 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays, when every ball off a Mariners bat seemed to be tapped lightly to an infielder.

"Those are things that are not really the M.O. of our ballclub," Pentland said.

And the balls being put in play, unlike recent, free-swinging editions of the Mariners, aren't scaring anyone. The Mariners scored 13 runs in the first two games of this series to pad their season total to a more respectable level but have managed just 27 runs in their eight other contests.

Kenji Johjima is hitting .071, Brad Wilkerson is at .125, Jose Vidro .139 and Richie Sexson .206.

On the positive side, the club has drawn more walks than anticipated. The Mariners entered Thursday tied with Chicago for the most walks in the American League, then drew four against Rays starter Edwin Jackson.

Seattle also entered the day with the best strikeouts-to-walks ratio in the league, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.

Those are the kind of things that could hold the key to the Mariners getting it going offensively. Pentland said he doesn't expect the Mariners to keep leading the league in walks, given their free-swinging tendencies.

But he does feel that better pitch selection will allow them to eventually put that fat part of the bat on the ball more frequently.

Pentland added that adjustments by hitters are often required in the first weeks after spring training. It's one thing, he said, to get the legs and hands feeling right in exhibition games, but quite another once real competition begins.

"I think, after that first week, you try to make adjustments, and certainly we've started to do that," he said. "Certainly, we're addressing it, and they're understanding what they need to do and how to do it. It's just going out, being productive and getting it done."

Full contact

It was clear to Miguel Batista in his pregame bullpen session that his pitches did not have their usual low- to mid-90s velocity on them. That made for an interesting challenge for the pitcher, who relies on power pitches to get him through jams often caused by walks and less-than-pinpoint control.

"I didn't have much on the ball today," he said. "So, I tried to get them to put their bat on the ball."

The plan worked, with Batista inducing four infield pop-ups and several soft ground balls to help escape trouble. One pop-up his fielders couldn't get to was a Mike DiFelice blooper into shallow right center on a pretty good pitch low and away that scored an insurance run in the sixth.

Batista wound up charged with four earned runs after leaving the game down 2-0, with two on and none out in the seventh. Eric O'Flaherty came on and hit Carlos Pena, the first batter he faced, to load the bases, then yielded a seeing-eye single to right by B.J. Upton that brought home the final two markers charged to Batista.

Notes

• Miguel Cairo became the final player on the roster to finally get in a game, flying out to center in an eighth-inning pinch-hit appearance with his team down by seven runs. Charlton Jimerson also got his first at-bat of the season in the ninth, grounding into a double play after Adrian Beltre had notched a single for Seattle's third and final hit.

• Mike Morse played in place of Wilkerson in right field, his second start of the season. Mariners manager John McLaren said he wanted Wilkerson's knees to have a rest after playing the first two games of the series on the artificial turf here. Morse went 0 for 2 with a walk but did make a racing, run-saving catch in the fifth on a fly ball to right center by Upton with two on and two out.

• Mariners closer J.J. Putz threw for eight minutes on flat ground for a second straight day Thursday, increasing his distance from 60 to 90 feet. A rib injury sidelined him April 1.

• Beltre had two of Seattle's three hits, along with a stolen base. He went 5 for 14 (.357) in the series with a home run.