Baek shines in complete win for M's

DETROIT -- A little cosmic energy must have shifted the Mariners' way long before anyone sensed their starting pitcher would go the distance.

It came in the fourth inning Wednesday night with the Mariners holding a fresh lead and Raul Ibanez sliding in left field to make a one-handed catch of a Magglio Ordonez line drive. The play seemed fitting, since it was somewhat similar to a game-saving snare Ordonez, the Detroit Tigers' right fielder, had made off Richie Sexson the night before.

Ibanez excelled both offensively and with the glove, a fitting symbol for the dual excellence Seattle displayed in a 9-2 win that easily rates as the team's most complete performance this season.

It truly was a complete performance for Mariners injury replacement Cha Seung Baek, a nine-inning delight backed by a 16-hit attack that ended the Tigers' eight-game winning streak.

"I think Cha Seung threw a lot of strikes, he got ahead and he went after guys," Ibanez said of the pitcher's six-hitter. "He kept us on our toes and it paid off for him."

Baek's outing was only the third complete-game victory for a Seattle pitcher this season, joining performances by Jarrod Washburn and Felix Hernandez. The Korean-born hurler, fighting to stick in the rotation once Hernandez returns next week, hadn't gone the distance since the Class A playoffs for Wisconsin nearly seven years ago.

Ibanez had previously made a running grab of a Placido Polanco blast to left center in the first inning, right after Curtis Granderson greeted Baek with a leadoff home run to right. The second catch by Ibanez on the Ordonez ball, however, occurred minutes after a three-run homer by Jose Guillen off Tigers starter Nate Robertson had turned a 2-0 deficit into a 3-2 lead for the Mariners.

The tendency in some games on this trip, which concludes this afternoon at Comerica Park, has been for Seattle pitchers to give the lead right back. That could very well have happened had Ibanez not caught Ordonez's sinking drive and instead seen him chug into second base with nobody out.

Ibanez did laugh off comparisons between his grab and the eye-popper Ordonez made.

"It wasn't as good as that one yesterday," Ibanez said. "Magglio's play yesterday was unbelievable. That was a fully extended slide and he was way out in right center. Mine wasn't quite that good."

Whether or not it truly compared, the Mariners continued to get their gloves in the right place and turned the double-plays they had to. Baek shook off his rough beginning, which came after the game's start was delayed 1 hour, 36 minutes by rain, and began changing speeds more to fool Detroit's fastball-sitting hitters.

"My changeup was excellent today," said Baek, who needed only 79 pitches to get through the first seven innings, striking out the side in the sixth.

"It was a late-game, so I was a little bit starving," he added. "So, the trainer gave me an energy bar [after five innings] and I ate a little bit."

Baek actually ate a pair of energy bars. His team's hitters appeared to have done the same.

All the hard-hit balls had Seattle sent screaming into opponents' gloves the first three innings began to find holes in the fourth. The stunned crowd saw Robertson yield the three runs on Guillen's blast in the fourth, then three more in the fifth to get knocked from the game.

Ibanez helped with that process by scoring one of the fifth-inning runs on the Guillen homer, then cranked a double to the gap in right center to put the Mariners ahead by two in the fifth.

He trotted home moments later on a Sexson double to make it a 5-2 game. Seattle scored four more in the sixth inning off relief pitcher Jason Grilli to turn the contest into a rout.

Mariners manager Mike Hargrove was breathing easier after this one. He'd seen his newly shuffled lineup erupt and Baek pitch economically enough to give an exhausted bullpen a much-needed night off.

"They hit some balls early that we made good plays on," Hargrove said of a team looking for a .500 finish of an eight-game trip against some tough opponents. "Then Baek settled down, started changing speeds, did a good job of keeping the ball down. They had only four hits going into the eighth inning against a club that's really been swinging the bats well."

But the Mariners also swung well, finishing off their opponent when the opportunity arose, and Hargrove clearly appreciated the overall effort.

"We played a good ballgame tonight," Hargrove said. "Against a very good opponent that was hot."

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

Read his daily blog at www.seattletimes.com/Mariners