Mariners let down uneasy

Too many Mariners looking and feeling uneasy over nine long innings had made any hope for victory futile.

Emergency left fielder Ben Broussard looked very uneasy watching two screaming fly balls transform him into a 220-pound pretzel in back-to-back innings. Ichiro admitted to feeling very uneasy right before a botched hit-and-run play in the seventh that saw him thrown out at second to end his American League record streak of 45 consecutive stolen bases.

Mariners starting pitcher Jarrod Washburn certainly had nothing go easy as the Los Angeles Angels found holes with every broken-bat blooper and saw five of their runs score because of misplayed balls. In the end, this 7-3 loss in front of 20,488 fans at Safeco Field was a study in uneasiness, the least of which was caused by Seattle falling back to .500 and dropping three games behind the division-leading Angels.

"I'm good at throwing inside and I threw inside," Washburn said. "They just did a good job of getting their bats broken and putting it in a spot where they get to go on base."

Washburn was telling the truth and nothing but.

Even the fastball that Vladimir Guerrero — who went 3 for 5 with three runs batted in — cranked into the left-field seats for a two-run homer in the first ran so far inside it might have hit him had he held his swing. But the Angels caught and were given too many breaks for the Mariners to overcome a seven-inning effort by Angels starter Bartolo Colon, who won for the fifth straight time since coming off the disabled list.

Seattle tried to make a game of it before all the breaks went the other way.

Adrian Beltre halved the deficit in the second inning by clubbing his first of two doubles and scoring on a Yuniesky Betancourt single to make it 2-1. But then Guerrero hit another hard fly ball to left field in the third, this one in the park and much more playable.

The problem is, Broussard was making his first start in left since Sept. 16, 2002. Raul Ibanez had begged off pregame with a sore lower back, leaving Broussard to attempt to catch a ball that — while by no means an easy grab — could have been chased down by an outfielder who'd gotten a strong jump on it.

But Broussard seemed momentarily frozen as the ball came his way, got twisted around trying to backpedal, then watched it sail over his head and hop off the wall. One run scored on the double and two more would later cross the plate on a bloop single to left by Shea Hillenbrand with two out.

Broussard had barely taken the field again in the fourth inning when Jose Molina hit another drive to the gap in left-center. A late-breaking Broussard took another curious, twisting route to the ball and watched it land in front of him for a leadoff double.

Molina would later score on an Orlando Cabrera single to make it 6-1.

Broussard tried to atone with a solo homer to right off Colon in the sixth inning that cut the lead to three runs. When Ichiro led off the seventh inning with a single, Mariners manager Mike Hargrove opted for a hit-and-run with Jose Vidro at the plate.

But the pitch from Colon was perhaps his worst of the night. The ball soared high and out of the zone, resulting in something similar to a pitchout as catcher Molina snared it and threw Ichiro out by several feet.

Vidro didn't bother swinging. It likely would not have mattered had he done so since the pitch was so far outside.

"It was a situation where we wanted to get runners on base because we were down by three," Ichiro said through an interpreter. "But when we got the sign, I had a bad feeling about it."

Ichiro wouldn't elaborate on why he felt so uneasy, saying only that: "In the game of baseball, feelings like that are key."

Feelings or not, he said he'd never disobey a hit-and-run sign. Not that this was the play that decided a game in which the Mariners were still down three and saw Jose Guillen and Kenji Johjima help give the Angels another run in the ninth on an error and a passed ball.

That came one frame after Ibanez, making a pinch-hit appearance with two on and two out in the eighth, went down swinging on a 2-2 pitch from reliever Scot Shields. Hargrove wasn't blaming Ibanez, Guillen or Johjima for his team's fifth loss in six games against the Angels this season.

Nor was he blaming Broussard for letting the two balls drop in. Or the Ichiro-Vidro hit-and-run that never was. On a night with so much combined uneasiness all-around, this one simply wasn't in the cards.

"The difference last night and tonight was that ... all the fast guys got on in front of Guerrero," Hargrove said. "With a guy like Vladimir in the lineup, you've got to keep the people off the bases in front of him and that minimizes the damage he can do."

Geoff Baker: 206-464-8286 or gbaker@seattletimes.com. Read his daily blog at www.seattletimes.com/Mariners