M's drop the ball in one-run loss to Angels

A night of frustration for Erik Bedard ended with the most gut-twisting sight of all.

That would be Mariners manager John McLaren trotting out to the mound to get him in the fourth inning of this 5-4 loss to the Los Angeles Angels. Bedard had already seen some bleeders bounce off his fielders or roll under their diving bodies. Watched a blooper elude the glove of his sliding right fielder. Endured the sight of the other team's No. 9 hitter drawing two walks off him to keep run-scoring rallies alive.

But no pitcher laying claim to ace status wants to be yanked with plenty of gas still left in his tank the way Bedard was 75 pitches into his latest abbreviated stint. And while Bedard played it cool afterward, he was well aware of why McLaren thought it wise for his No. 1 starter to be showering before the game was even official.

"He didn't want it to get out of hand, so he came and got me," Bedard said after failing to go five innings for the third time in his past six starts.

And there you have it. The manager is afraid his ace starter will let the game get out of hand. In a season that's already well out of hand for a team now a season-high 17 games under .500.

Indeed, the move by McLaren was his best one of the night. It got long reliever R.A. Dickey into the contest and gave the 23,534 fans at Safeco Field something to cheer about besides the between-innings show by the groundskeeping crew.

Dickey wound up tossing 5-2/3 innings of three-hit, scoreless relief. That followed a 5-1/3 scoreless-inning stretch against the Detroit Tigers on Friday night and has the team's coaching staff thinking of adding him to the rotation.

The difference this time was Dickey's knuckleball, which he termed "his best ever" after struggling with it against Detroit.

"I'm hoping that I'm getting more consistent with it," he said. "It's been a long journey to try to do this thing."

It didn't matter on this night, except for keeping things interesting.

The Mariners trailed 5-0 when Bedard was yanked one out into the fourth inning. He'd given up an unearned run in the first after an Adrian Beltre fielding error, then two more in the second when a diving Jose Lopez let a Maicer Izturis grounder roll underneath him.

Had Lopez at least knocked the ball down, it might have saved Bedard a run. Instead, it helped bring his night to a speedier conclusion as the Angels led off the fourth with a Robb Quinlan double and the night's second walk by No. 9 hitter Jeff Mathis.

Both were bunted ahead one base and then right fielder Wladimir Balentien failed to snag a bloop single to right by Izturis. One run scored and a second came home moments later when Howie Kendrick lined Bedard's final pitch of the night into right field.

The five-run lead stood up for Angels starter Joe Saunders, who improved to 9-2 with a 2.63 earned-run average despite his infield defense nearly sabotaging the game.

Lopez hit a solo homer in the fourth to get Seattle on the board. The Mariners then scored three unearned runs in the fifth as some two-out errors by second baseman Kendrick and third baseman Quinlan let Seattle back in the contest.

But the Mariners stopped scoring the moment the Angels quit booting the ball around. Saunders retired six of the final seven batters he faced to make it through seven innings, and the bullpen finished off the final six hitters in a row.

Angels closer Francisco Rodriguez struck out the side in the ninth to earn the save.

When it was over, all McLaren had left was the gleam of Dickey after another unimpressive outing by Bedard, the defense and an offense that generated just six hits for a second straight night.

"Erik didn't have great stuff tonight," McLaren said of Bedard. "But we made an error behind him, and they had a lot of hits that weren't real great hits."

But of course, if the story really ended there, McLaren wouldn't have been so quick to pull Bedard in hopes of keeping things close. McLaren admitted that he and his staff have discussed the possibility of adding Dickey to the starting five-man rotation.

"I don't know, it's a thought there," he said. "We've had that on the back burner."

That may have to change, because his current starting five keep leaving the rest of the team on the front burner. In a saucepan with the flames licking higher.

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