Ecstasy, agony for M's in 13-12 extra-inning loss to Rangers

ARLINGTON, Texas — Even a dream home run in the ninth inning simply added to the agony of this marathon Mariners nightmare.

That the Mariners would eventually lose this game to the Texas Rangers seemed a foregone conclusion by the middle innings. But it was the way this 13-12 loss eventually played out over 10 seemingly endless innings on Monday night that made the hurt all that much tougher to bear.

Outplayed, out-walked and out-hustled in the field from the second inning onward, the Mariners used a tying Kenji Johjima home run in a frantic four-run ninth to reignite their silent dugout. But the same dreams that hitched a ride on Johjima's three-run blast to left died an inning later when an explosive opposing shot also carried deep into the night.

"Our pitching didn't hold up tonight, from the beginning to the end," Mariners manager John McLaren said after a Ramon Vazquez solo homer off Brandon Morrow ended the game. "We're starting to swing the bats. They're coming around. We just had a rough night pitching."

That they did.

And it's the only reason that what was left of the crowd of 18,509 at Rangers Ballpark could raise a cheer at the end.

Seattle's pitching did not hold up after Erik Bedard was spotted a 5-0 lead in the first inning, courtesy of a two-run homer by Raul Ibanez, a balk by opposing starter Vicente Padilla and an error by third baseman Vazquez.

"Nothing was working tonight," Bedard admitted, after monster home runs by Josh Hamilton and Milton Bradley in a five-run Texas third chased him from the game before he had notched a single out that inning.

Four Mariners pitchers walked 13 batters — just the fifth time that has happened in franchise history in the first nine innings of a game.

Jose Lopez muffed a routine grounder in the seventh that should have gotten Mark Lowe out of the inning with the score tied. Instead, after Lowe yielded two more singles, the Rangers were on their way to a four-run inning and a 10-6 lead.

"There's no excuse for that one," Lopez said of the Michael Young grounder to his right. "I made an error, they got four more runs and took the lead."

Seattle got no help from its pitchers after Wladimir Balentien hit a two-run homer in the eighth to narrow the gap to 10-8. Instead, Lowe walked three more hitters and Arthur Rhodes another to force in two runs and restore Texas' comfort zone.

Only a two-run double by Ibanez in the ninth and Johjima's stunning three-run shot, on an 0-2 pitch with two out off Texas closer C.J. Wilson, looked like it might save the day.

"I think they went off [in celebration] because a guy like me that was the goat for the past couple of weeks had hit his first home run," Johjima said through an interpreter.

They were also cheering because to lose a game like this, in which their No. 1 starter had been given the kind of lead only Jeff Weaver and Horacio Ramirez could blow, seemed unfathomable. Not for a club desperately seeking its first two-game win streak in weeks, trying to avoid irrelevance before the season is even a third over.

But once again, the pitching could not hold up.

Morrow had looked unhittable in the ninth and to start the 10th. But onetime Mariners infielder Vazquez, the guy who ended J.J. Putz's save streak last July with one swing of his bat, did it to Seattle again.

Johjima noted that it was windy out and that breaking balls might have been impacted. But he said he didn't want to make excuses.

"We just weren't coming up with good control," he said.

And the Mariners may no longer have much control in things outside of pitching either. At 8 ½ games back of the division lead, with even their best pitchers coughing up leads, any control they may have on their own destiny is fading fast.