M's Notes: Beltre laboring with bat

BOSTON — If the Mariners continue to sputter on offense, there will be changes.

The problem for manager Mike Hargrove is the limited number of changes he can make with Ichiro off to the worst start of his career on either side of the Pacific, hitting .185, and Carl Everett hitting .154.

Unfortunately, both of them are producing more than Adrian Beltre, now down to .109.

"At some point we'll move some guys around," Hargrove said after his club was topped 3-2 by the Boston Red Sox on Sunday. "But it's not as simple as it may appear."

For today's 11 a.m. EST Patriots Day start, Willie Bloomquist will replace Jeremy Reed in center field, with left-hander Lenny DiNardo starting for Boston. Everett will be back at DH after Matt Lawton made his Mariners debut at that spot on Sunday.

"But Beltre will be in there," Hargrove said. "We're trying to get him started. He had two good at-bats on Friday, and his last at-bat [Sunday] may have been his best of the season."

Beltre lined out to right, the perfect stroke with which to start coming out of a slump. But the Red Sox had just inserted Adam Stern for defense in center and moved Dunstan Mohr from center to right to replace Wily Mo Pena, who had butchered several balls in the series.

"Just my luck," Beltre said. "Pena's a good friend of mine, but I wish he'd still been out there and maybe I'd have gotten a hit or at least gotten on base."

The third baseman, who has been playing superb defense, said he didn't think it would help him to move in the lineup. "I'm hitting 11th right now. Where I hit won't make a difference."

Hargrove still could consider it, since Beltre is 0 for 17 with runners in scoring position. But Everett is 0 for 8 in that situation and Ichiro, 1 for 16 since his three-hit game Wednesday, is 1 for 12.

Overall, the Mariners are hitting .203 with runners in scoring position on this trip, and have gone 3 for 12 with a runner on third base and less than two outs. They have only one sacrifice fly this season.

A winning curve

Joel Pineiro's 3-0 win over the Red Sox Saturday was the eighth shutout by Seattle in Fenway Park, and the first in six seasons.

For the most part, each of the winning pitchers in those shutouts shared one trait: They had exceptional curveballs.

Pineiro's was so effective that in the seventh inning, Alex Gonzalez started to swing at a pitch that hit him in the midsection.

"You know he was thinking he was going to get a breaking ball, then the ball never broke," an American League scout said.

Pineiro said he had been working on the curveball in the bullpen for a while. "They were hitting my hard stuff, so I decided to break it out, and it was working."

Leaning to the left

To the surprise of absolutely no one, the Red Sox are planning to start a left-hander today. DiNardo, who has made one previous start in 32 big-league appearances since 2004, will replace lefty David Wells, placed on the disabled list Saturday with a strained right knee.

Seattle is 0-2 in games started by left-handers, and entering Sunday's game was hitting only .136 (8 for 59) with just two runs scored off southpaws.

Unless the Mariners do better against lefties, they will see many more DiNardo types pulled from bullpens or the minors to face them. Against righties, the Mariners are hitting .255 (96 for 377).

DiNardo is 0-0 with a 3.38 earned-run average in two relief appearances this year.

A helping hand

First-base umpire Rick Reed cost Seattle a run in the first inning when he blew a call on Jason Varitek, who was clearly tagged out by Richie Sexson. Instead of being the third out of the inning, Mark Loretta scored from third base for a 2-0 Boston lead.

Hargrove went out to complain, and did so calmly for several minutes, but the call stood.

Reed actually had saved Hargrove from being tossed Saturday when the manager went out to complain that Gonzalez had swung at that Pineiro curveball, since his bat had come around as he was hit, and the call should have been a strike.

Said Hargrove: "As I got on the field he [Reed] told me I couldn't argue the call. I said, 'But, Rick, he swung and it's a strike.' Then he reminded me that if I approached the plate umpire to argue a ball or strike call, he'd have to toss me. I said, 'See ya,' and got off the field."

In general, the Mariners were forgiving of Reed's mistake Sunday. "Umpires get it right 99 percent of the time," Jarrod Washburn said, "although I thought it was pretty clear he tagged him."