Notebook | Foot pain hampers struggling Miguel Batista

A bridge placed inside his shoe is the latest thing Mariners pitcher Miguel Batista hopes can help turn his season around.

Batista has already experimented with a new form of delivery that hides the baseball from hitters longer, something that's brought him success. But he's been hampered by physical issues all season, one of the problems being pain in his right push-off foot that dates back to last season.

"They told me it might be arthritis, which really had me worried," Batista said.

It turns out, though, that the problem relates to a tendon in his foot that becomes inflamed if he leans too far forward on his toes and causes them to rub together. The pain becomes so bad that Batista will often take his shoes off in the dugout between innings and walk around barefoot because it puts less pressure on his toes than when he's wearing shoes.

Batista has also often been spotted limping around the clubhouse after he pitches. Again, he always does this in bare feet.

After finally concluding the problem wasn't arthritic, or a bone condition, team trainers this week devised a solution. They placed the bridge inside his shoe to spread his toes out so that they aren't squished together.

"Now, it feels like I'm back on my heels," he said. "It's going to take time to get used to. But I haven't felt any pain so far."

Batista tried the bridge out for the first time while throwing off a mound in a bullpen session before Thursday night's game. During that same session, he worked on his second main physical issue, a groin problem that flared up a few starts ago.

It seems that Batista has been causing the groin more pain by swinging his left planting leg to generate force on his pitches. Pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre spotted the problem and worked with Batista to generate more force on his pitches by driving off his right foot and letting his body's momentum take care of the rest.

The right foot is, of course, the one in need of the bridge.

Batista isn't sure whether there's a link between the two problems. Or if he'd been swinging the left leg more so he could favor the right foot and not push off it too hard.

"We'll see how it goes from here," he said. "So far, so good."

Perlozzo returns

Mariners third-base coach Sam Perlozzo was back with the team on Thursday, just two days after undergoing arthroscopic surgery on his left knee to remove some torn cartilage. Perlozzo first hurt the knee on April 25 while running out to third base from the Mariners dugout.

He'd already been nursing a sore hamstring and feels that might have caused him to injure the knee. Once at third base, he knew he'd done something. Within a couple of innings, he was walking back and forth from the dugout.

Perlozzo now hopes to resume his duties at third base within a few days. The career minor-leaguer, who appeared in 12 major-league games as an infielder, had never undergone surgery of any kind. So he was intrigued when the doctors gave him the option of using a general anesthetic or a spinal one that would enable him to remain awake and view the entire procedure on a closed-circuit video monitor.

The latter idea intrigued him.

"I couldn't see the doctor," he said. "I didn't want to be watching him digging in there. But I could see everything that was going on inside on the TV screen."

Clement gets a break

Mariners manager John McLaren gave struggling rookie Jeff Clement the night off after he'd struck out 13 times in his previous 23 at-bats, dropping his batting average to .130 in his first eight games.

"I think he might be pressing a little bit," McLaren said. "He's trying to get his feet on the ground. They're making some pitches on him and he's pressing, so we'll just let him take a deep breath."

McLaren insisted that Clement isn't the only culprit in that department. He'd been thrown out of Wednesday's game, so he had a chance to study his hitters up close on a clubhouse television set.

"It looks like a lot of our guys are trying to do too much," McLaren said. "Last night, I thought we had a lot of wild swings. The game plan they had, they weren't applying it last night. I mean, [opposing pitcher Vicente] Padilla throws so hard and when you try to do that little extra you're either going to miss it or you're going to swing and miss. "

For the record

Streak: L3

Home: 8-10

Road: 6-12

vs. AL West: 9-9

vs. L.A.: 3-3

vs. Oakland: 3-2

vs. Texas: 3-4

vs. AL East: 3-10

vs. AL Central: 2-3

vs. NL: 0-0

vs. LHP: 2-7

vs. RHP: 12-15

Day: 3-7

Night: 11-15

One-run: 1-8

Extra innings: 0-1

Home attendance

Thursday's crowd: 22,922

Season total: 456,217

Biggest crowd: 46,334 (March 31)

Smallest crowd: 15,818 (May 6)

Average (18 dates): 25,345

2007 average (18 dates): 28,914