We've had a late scratch, with Mike Carp being pulled from tonights lineup and Chone Figgins inserted for him in left field. No word yet on why.

Michael Saunders isn't quite what many people envision as a No. 2 hitter. But then again, this isn't quite your typical major league lineup the Mariners keep trotting out.

So, for tonight at least, it's Saunders who gets to hold down the No. 2 spot in the order.

It's something he has experience at, albeit in the minors. But hey, if the team plans to play Alex Liddi at shortstop sometime soon, why not give Saunders a try batting second?

"Ever since 2007 in the Cal League and up, I hit extensively in the two-hole,'' Saunders said. "I've done it before.''

And he doesn't plan any change in approach.

"I'm not turning into a guy who's going to see 10 pitches,'' he said. "I'm going to stay with my approach.''

It's been an up-and-down year for Saunders at times. He's batting .226 for the season, but is 5-for-18 the past week and 3-for-10 more recently.

"I'm going through a stretch right now where I know I'm not getting any extra-base hits,'' he said. "But I'm still getting some singles and drawing some walks.''

Saunders has a .305 on-base percentage and .409 slugging percentage overall.

He isn't quite what manager Eric Wedge envisions in a prototypical leadoff hitter. But right now, his options are limited.

Plenty of discussion taking place about Seattle's ongoing offensive woes and what can be done about them. Just for a change of pace, I thought I'd play a little game with all of you involving sets of numbers pertaining to weighted on-base average (wOBA).

Player A: .425, .409, .381, .386, .317

Player B: .322, .319, .309, .257

In each case, the final number is an example of "one of these things is not like the others" and seemingly came out of nowhere as a dropoff after steady performance with the three prior figures.

Player A in this case is Edgar Martinez and the numbers represent the final four seasons of his career from 2001 on the left through 2004.

Player B is Ichiro and the numbers represent his totals with runners in scoring position the last four seasons of his career from 2009 on the left through to this current season.

Both players had outstanding careers worthy of Hall of Fame consideration. Each established excellence over a sustained period of roughly a decade. In both cases, there was no indication the prior year of the dropoff that was to come.

Martinez, as we all know, spent the entire season watching his numbers dropoff solidify in 2004, then called it a career. He was done.

Ichiro has only had 39 plate appearances with RSIP this year, so we don't know whether these low numbers will solidify or not. What we do know, though, from looking at Martinez's numbers, is that even a career track record of success is no guarantee a player -- even one worthy of Hall of Fame consideration -- will be able to recapture his past success. Not once he reaches an age where skills of all players have been shown to decine rapidly across-the-board. Even for players whose ability to defy the pull of age has been celebrated to that point. We all get old.

And when you're running a baseball team, one that costs $80 million and up to put on the field, you can't just say "ho-hum" take a nap and see how it all pans out at the end of the year. When you're running a Major League Baseball team, you worry about whether the decline is real, how many wins it might cost your team and whether that cushy six-or-seven-figure job of yours will be on-the-line if you make the wrong call.

We'll get into Ichiro's RISP numbers versus his regular ones in another post. Don't want to clutter this one up. But yeah, that's another thing anyone running a team will have to weight and decide whether there is a bearing.

Let's play one more game with numbers.

When you're going as woefully as the Mariners have on offense for most of this trip and for a good part of the season, you start to look for signs of hope. A handful of them saw some things today that they hope will lead to better things.

For now, it's just another four-hit day. One run scored in two games at Fenway Park.

The Mariners track a bunch of stuff during games and one of them is the number of "hard hit" balls. Mariners manager Eric Wedge counted nine or 10 of them today and hopes that they lead to something.

"Anytime we did have a good opportunity, we just didn't find a hole,'' he said. "We still had some poor ABs from a few guys and we've got to do a better job of that. I think we have four or five guys heading in the right direction. What we need to do is get the other four or five heading in the right direction with them.''

And that's been the problem. As I mentioned today on my Talkin' Baseball segment on Sports Radio 950 KJR, the Mariners have had some positive individual signs from hitters so far. This looks like an offense with better individual pieces than we saw in 2010 and 2011 and I alluded to it just last week when discussing the offense.

But overall, there is just too much sputtering. Too little ability to string together hits and keep rallies going.

You can hit balls hard, yes, and they may even add up to nine or 10 over nine innings. But not every hard hit ball in a game is going to fall in. They just never do. And even if six or seven fall in for hits, you're going to need more than that over nine innings if you want to score more than a couple of runs without some big homer involved.

Justin Smoak nearly went deep in today's second inning. Had his ball been ruled fair, I think it's possible it might have changed the momentum in the game, maybe led to Josh Beckett getting rattled a bit. Who knows?

"From my view, right down the line, it went right over the pole,'' Smoak said.

Close, but no cigar. And after that, the Mariners really didn't do anything until the fourth inning when they were already down 1-0. They whiffed six times the first two frames and nine times by the fifth. In fact, the first five innings, their only hits were an infield single by Dustin Ackley and a flair by Ichiro that dropped in front of the center fielder.

Yeah, there were a few hard-hit balls, but it wasn't exactly a firestorm of them.

Things changed later on in the game.

The Mariners never really showed up on offense today, dropping a 5-0 decision to the Boston Red Sox in a game that felt over when David Ortiz hit a solo homer in the third to open the scoring.

As it turned out, that was all the runs the Red Sox would need.

The Mariners managed just four hits in seven innings off Josh Beckett, who had a 5.97 earned run average coming in. They had struck out six times the first three innings and nine times by the fifth.

Last night, they revived a struggling Jon Lester by allowing him to go nine innings while allowing one meaningless run in the final frame.

Boston leads it 4-0 as we enter the seventh inning. The Mariners don't have an error today, but have looked lousy on defense and it cost them a run in the fifth inning when shortstop Munenori Kawasaki forgot to touch second while attempting to turn a double play. Instead, David Ortiz -- who'd beaten the infield shift with a bunt, of all things, moments earlier -- was safe at second, took third on a wild pitch and scored on a single to left by Will Middlebrooks off Charlie Furbush.

Furbush took over from Blake Beavan after four laborious innings from him.

The offense has gone AWOL today and the few hits they have had haven't come in any key situations. Of the three hits by Seattle, Ichiro has two of them -- an infield chopper and a broken bat blooper.

2:42 p.m.: Two more runs for the Red Sox in the fourth inning to take a 3-0 lead. Well, at least it's not 5-0 this time, but the M's have got to do a better job at finishing off rallies. They finally got to Josh Beckett for a couple of hits in the top of the fourth to put two on with one out. But then Jesus Montero hit a flyball to medium left field for the second out and Kyle Seager grounded out to end the threat.

Boston saw Cody Ross draw a one-out walk against Blake Beavan, followed by a Daniel Nava single that put runners at the corners. Mike Aviles then doubled to right to bring one run home and a groundout to the right side by Ryan Sweeney plated the other.

2:17 p.m.: We're getting to the point where the Mariners might as well just walk David Ortiz once it gets to a three-ball count with a pitcher on the mound throwing nothing but fastballs for strikes. Blake Beavan saw the count go full, tried to sneak a fastball by Ortiz for a strike and saw it crushed into the right field seats.

Boston leads 1-0 after three innings.

Josh Beckett has six strikeouts in three innings and has whiffed four in a row as we begin the fourth. No, he hasn't allowed a baserunner yet. Time for an Ichiro infield single this inning.

1:57 p.m.: Blake Beavan has allowed four baserunners in two innings, but made the pitches he needed to at key moments to keep this a scoreless game as we head to the third. The Mariners have gone six up, six down with three strikeouts against Josh Beckett so far, though Justin Smoak nearly had a home run to right field in the second.

The ball was ruled foul, Eric Wedge went out to argue and umpires convened and went to video review. It took quite a while, but they finally ruled it foul. I had trouble tracking the ball on video replay and I'm sure they did as well.

1:07 p.m.: We've got Blake Beavan going against Josh Beckett this afternoon in the finale of this two-game series. They just held a pre-game ceremony to honor Tim Wakefield, who retired last February after a career that included 17 seasons with the Red Sox.

Beckett won't be nearly as popular with the crowd if he can't throw strikes early.

Mariners manager Eric Wedge said pregame that Alex Liddi could see some time at shortstop soon. Wedge reiterated that his primary goal is to get regular shortstop Brendan Ryan back to where he needs to be.

Where is that? I'd say a good 100 points higher than his .140 batting average.

But Liddi needs a spot to play and when I mentioned Kyle Seager for shortstop, Wedge told me he wasn't going to consider it.

"No,'' he said. "But I might consider playing Liddi at shortstop.''

Brendan Ryan is rapidly getting close to creating the "Ryan Line" in baseball. He's already obliterated the "Mendoza Line" of .200 by remaining in the lineup the majority of the week, but with his batting average down to .140 he's out of there again today and Munenori Kawasaki is in.

Say, who says we need Ryan to fall to .100 to create the "Ryan Line"? Let's make it an even .150. He's managed to stay in there the past week hovering around that mark.

Let's just say he appears to be reaching critical mass. No matter how good his defense is, you can't play a guy seven days a week when he gives you the equivalent of a National League lineup where the pitcher hits.

Ryan's follies the past six weeks have created an almost intolerable lineup situation where the Mariners are now playing several hitters in spots they aren't all that suited for.

Hence, today, the latest right-handed bat to audition for the No. 2 spot -- John Jaso (and he's a lefty, for crying out loud). There just aren't enough righty bats on this team that are any good.

Join me Tuesday morning at 8:30 a.m. PT for my Talkin' Baseball segment on Sports Radio 950 KJR's Mitch in the Morning show with host Mitch Levy.

Once again, the Mariners had a starting pitcher bury them by the fourth inning and the predictable result was a 6-1 loss.

Jason Vargas wore this one appropriately, admitting he had just one pitch -- a fastball -- working for him all night. When that happens, the opposing hitters just have to sit back and wait for him to center a few because they know his changeup isn't going to land for a strike unless he grooves it.

But Vargas had some help tonight. His offense got zero going against Puyallup native Jon Lester the first five innings and by the time they managed anything, they were too far behind for it to matter.

So, a bit of a team effort there.

Lester needed just 55 pitches to get through the first five innings. He allowed just an Ichiro infield single off his glove in the fourth inning during that span and the Mariners couldn't hit a ball out of the infield until a couple of flyouts in the fifth.

Yeah, that's not going to win many games.

Neither is being down 5-0 by the fourth for the second time in three days.

Vargas had a Fenway Park double skied off the Green Monster in left field by David Ortiz for the game's first run. But an ensuing double by Adrian Gonzalez was ripped down the line for another run.

Then, in the second, we'd noted in the game blog that a pair of infield singles off Vargas were scorched rather hard. Finally, in the fourth, the first homer by Daniel Nava this season and a second, rocket blast by Kelly Shoppach were legit long balls.

"I was really more upset with the fourth inning more than anything,'' Vargas said. "I had a chance to keep us in the ballgame, even with mediocre stuff.

"But I let the bottom part of their lineup get ahead of me and it kind of put us out of the ballgame right there.''