M's go quietly into night after 2-0 loss

A snakebitten Erik Bedard honed in on home plate and tried to forget about all the zeros on the wrong side of the scoreboard.

By the time the Mariners left-hander ended the seventh inning with a called strikeout on his 109th pitch, he'd made only two serious mistakes all night. But they were enough to deny him the victory. Even on a second consecutive occasion in which he'd thrown a seven-inning "quality start" of three earned runs or fewer allowed.

As Bedard was handcuffing the Texas Rangers, his team's anemic offense was mustering just two hits of their own off opposing starter Vicente Padilla. The end result was a 2-0 defeat on Wednesday night for Bedard and a Mariners squad that just can't seem to notch a hit when it truly matters.

"I pitched great, but it doesn't really matter," Bedard said. "We needed the win."

Those have been few and far between for the hitting-deprived Mariners, even when their starting pitchers go seven-plus innings. That's happened on 15 occasions so far this season and the starters have earned just six victories in those games.

"We're just trying every day and trying to get a win," Bedard said. "That's all you can ask. If we don't get it today, we'll try again tomorrow."

The team itself has only eight wins when a starter goes at least seven innings, one reason the Mariners, now 14-21, have dropped seven of eight and own the worst record in the American League. Another small crowd at Safeco Field, this one 17,173, was silenced much of the night by a home team that's scored fewer than four runs in 14 of its 35 games so far.

All of those games have resulted in losses.

Bedard's only faux pas was yielding a run-scoring triple to Brandon Boggs in the fourth and a solo homer to Milton Bradley on a misplaced change-up in the sixth. But that was going to be two too many runs on a night when the Mariners had twice as many walks as they did hits.

The Mariners have gone 13 consecutive innings without a run and scored just once in the last 23 frames. They were handcuffed even before the game started, with Richie Sexson leaving to tend to a family issue and Jose Vidro sitting out with back spasms.

That resulted in the rather unusual sight of Willie Bloomquist, batting just .185 this season, being called off the bench as a pinch-hitter in the ninth inning for rookie Jeff Clement with a runner on base. The Rangers had southpaw reliever C.J. Wilson on the mound and the Mariners wanted someone other than struggling left-handed hitting Clement at the plate.

But Bloomquist went down on strikes and Yuniesky Betancourt flied out to end the game.

Mariners manager John McLaren wasn't around by that point, having been tossed by umpire Mark Wegner in the second inning for chirping at him from the dugout. McLaren said he'd simply been asking Wegner to open up a tight strike zone a bit for Bedard and that the umpire misunderstood something he'd said.

Bench coach Jim Riggleman took over in the Mariners dugout.

"We were a little bit behind the eight ball tonight," McLaren said of his bench, which certainly could have used Vidro in the ninth. Vidro is mashing lefties to a .320 tune this season.

Then again, had Vidro been healthy, he likely would have started at first base instead of Miguel Cairo and not been available as a pinch-hitter. In other words, things are so bad for this team that even hypothetical situations are no longer working out Seattle's way.

The Mariners had one final crack at Padilla in the seventh, drawing consecutive walks to open the inning. But one after another, Clement, Betancourt and Wladimir Balentien went down swinging.

Clement's strikeout was key to Padilla's escape and came when Wegner — his strike zone apparently expanding — rung him up on a pitch that appeared well inside.

"I thought it was inside," Clement said. "They're working away, away, away, then all of a sudden, they try to paint the inside corner. I thought it was in."

Clement's average is down to .130 his first week as a full-time big leaguer. But he's not alone on a team where veterans and younger players alike are hanging their starters out to dry.

"It's a grind right here," McLaren said. "We're not swinging the bats well right now and it seems like when we do hit the ball well, it's right at somebody."

Not so much in this rock bottom game. When it truly mattered this time around, the staggering Mariners couldn't even hit the ball, period.

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