Schilling bests Moyer in duel

BOSTON — With two of the top pitchers alive working — Jamie Moyer's 205 wins rank sixth among active pitchers, Curt Schilling's 194 eighth — it should have been a game of pitching.

And even in Fenway Park with the wind blowing out, the two veterans didn't disappoint.

For the Mariners, the outcome was a disappointment. But for the purists, the Boston Red Sox's 2-1 win was a game pitched exquisitely.

Certainly, Schilling did better, showing he is back from last year's health troubles by sending the Seattle offense back into the suspended animation of last weekend with just three hits over eight innings.

But if Schilling was beautiful, Moyer was beguiling.

"Jamie battled," Mariners manager Mike Hargrove said. "He's been sick as a dog for a couple of days, but he battled. I was surprised he wound up with more strikeouts than Schilling [8-7]."

The eight K's were the most for the Mariners left-hander since July 2004. And that with a fastball topping out at 80-81 mph, slower than most changeups, and a much different proposition for batters than Schilling's 94-95 mph fastball, with a splitter that was tumbling off the table.

"There's a reason Jamie Moyer has been pitching in this league forever," Red Sox manager Terry Francona said. "He finds ways to get you out."

From the start, the old master appeared to have no chance, stranding five runners in the first two innings but needing 51 pitches to do so.

But as the game wore on, Moyer made only one serve he'd take back, one that Alex Gonzalez hit for a two-run double in the fourth and that might have been wind-aided.

"Off the bat, I thought I had a chance on that ball," said Jeremy Reed, who went to the left-center wall to see the ball hit about 8 to 10 feet over his head. "It may have been the wind, maybe not. Sometimes that wall there comes into play more than most."

Moyer, who said the crud he caught in Cleveland did not affect his pitching, started Gonzalez out with two pitches down, and the Boston batter didn't offer at them.

"I had to get back in the count, so I came up a bit and he hit it well," Moyer said. "But he could as easily have popped it up."

Moyer got one break from there. With Gonzalez on third later, Mark Loretta bunted. Adrian Beltre charged hard to glove the ball, and Gonzalez somehow stopped part way home, turned back to third and was tagged out by shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt.

"That play showed Beltre's athleticism, and how smart Betancourt was to cover third," Hargrove said.

Around that one fluke, Moyer was magnificent, despite using 114 pitches in six innings, a total he exceeded just four times in 32 starts last season, all in warm-weather months.

"Jamie was great," Carl Everett said. "Was Schilling great, too? I never credit pitchers. I make my living off pitchers. But Jamie was great, and he got squeezed a lot, too."

Plate umpire Tim Tschida seemed to call a tight game for Moyer at times. "Early, yeah," the pitcher agreed. "Later it got a bit looser for me."

Reverting back to the struggles of last weekend, where they got only five total hits in the first five innings of four straight losses, the Mariners got only two hits off Schilling in the first five frames.

They turned the second hit — Richie Sexson's leadoff double in the fifth — into a run on two infield outs.

They had an identical chance in the sixth when Reed led off with a double. Betancourt got him to third with an infield out, but Schilling struck out Ichiro.

"Key out of our game? I don't know," Hargrove said. "It was the most obvious. But Schilling was tough."

Asked how tough, Ichiro responded, "I wonder." Pressed for an explanation, interpreter Ken Barron said it was a cultural expression that encompassed many aspects.

Schilling said he initially threw Ichiro fastballs trying to get him to pop up. "But when I get to two strikes, I can get away without trying to do too much."

He threw a diving splitter that Ichiro missed and later described with, "I swung and missed. If it had been a bad pitch I would not think much of myself. The job of the hitter is to hit that."

While Schilling rolled on, Moyer battled almost every inning, as the Red Sox had six doubles and put runners in scoring position in six innings.

"Curt's been throwing the ball well, and he competes and he's stingy with runs," said Moyer, now 7-7 at Fenway. "That's the challenge of it. Me? I think I threw decent. I had to pitch out of trouble a lot and I did, in five of six innings. But that wasn't good enough tonight."

Bob Finnigan: 206-464-8276 or bfinnigan@seattletimes.com