Mistakes pile up in Mariners' loss

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The first bit of accurate foresight didn't hit Mariners third-base coach Carlos Garcia until it was far too late.

Garcia realized almost the moment he waved Jose Lopez around third in the fourth inning Thursday that his runner would be thrown out. So did Lopez, the entire Seattle bench and every fan bearing witness to perhaps the worst-played all-around game this season.

Lopez could have had a stand-up triple off the wall in left-center field, but Garcia had him try for an inside-the-park home run despite having nobody out and his team trailing by six runs.

The ill-advised decision, two innings after Garcia had Lopez thrown out trying to score him from second on a single, was the difference in a wild, ugly 13-12 loss to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

"If I don't see any opportunity that a guy's going to score, I never try to send him in that situation," a visibly upset Garcia said after unleashing a profanity-laced tirade on himself. "I feel like I'm really aggressive over there. Sometimes, maybe too aggressive.

"I know the situation. I know everything that's going on and then all of a sudden, boom! — he got thrown out at the plate. Down six. It doesn't make any sense."

Didn't make much sense to send Lopez either. The throw from center hit cutoff man Brendan Harris almost the same time Lopez touched third base. Lopez was still about 20 feet away from home when catcher Dioner Navarro caught the relay.

"He was waiting for me a little bit," Lopez said with a sigh.

It gets worse for a Mariners team that gathered 18 hits and amassed 24 base runners.

• Seattle failed to notch its first three-game sweep of the year or gain ground on a first-place Los Angeles Angels squad routed in Detroit.

• The Mariners watched pitcher Horacio Ramirez blow another first-inning lead, then bow out after just two frames with shoulder stiffness.

• That forced an overworked bullpen into a six-inning stint, with losing pitcher Sean White getting torched for seven runs in a 40-pitch third. Seattle fell behind 12-4 before Lopez, notching a career-high four hits, clubbed a three-run homer in the seventh to cut the deficit to two.

Ty Wigginton hit a solo home run off Eric O'Flaherty in the eighth to make it 13-10. But Ichiro, playing in his 1,000th major-league game, smoked a two-run homer off closer Al Reyes in the ninth.

The crowd of 9,149 at Tropicana Field held its collective breath, having seen the Tampa Bay bullpen torch leads all season. But Reyes held on, striking out Jose Guillen with the tying run on first to notch his 13th save in as many tries.

"It was a game that was very easy for us to win," said Ichiro, who extended his hitting streak to 17 games, through an interpreter. "So it was not fun at all."

Not for Ramirez, whose earned-run average on the road climbed to 13.12. The Mariners staked him to a 2-0 lead by scoring twice in the first inning off Jae Seo, whose league-worst ERA among active starters jumped from 7.80 to 8.10.

But Ramirez gave the lead right back, walking Harris, yielding a triple to Carl Crawford, another walk and a double to Delmon Young. That made it 3-2 for Tampa Bay and brought manager Mike Hargrove to the mound.

"He told me to get more aggressive with the hitters," Ramirez said.

The pitcher said his shoulder stiffened between innings and his velocity dropped in the second. Ramirez is to be examined by a doctor in Kansas City today and doesn't know how long he'll be out.

"In the past, I've said 'I'll only be out for a start,' or 'I'll be out for this' and it's been a lot longer," Ramirez said. "So I'm just going to kind of ride the wave."

Hargrove may have another reliever recalled from Class AAA Tacoma for the weekend. He hopes Ramirez won't miss a start, but his concern remains high.

"On a scale of one to 10, it's probably a seven or eight right now," he said.

Hargrove also had to be concerned about Garcia taking his aggressive baserunning edict to extremes.

"I'm not going to go there," Hargrove said. "There's a difference between what we've preached and the other thing."

Garcia was more than willing to go there. He wasn't as upset about Lopez being thrown out by about 10 feet in the second by rookie right fielder Delmon Young.

"It was the first time we played them," Garcia said. "I didn't know he had such a good arm. But now I know."

Needlessly running into the first out of an inning down by six, as Lopez did in the fourth, was another matter.

"Hopefully, I'm going to be there tomorrow," Garcia quipped.

He was only joking, of course. But for a coaching staff already under pressure to win, days like these can turn the smiles to frowns.

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

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