M's fans lend Felix helping hand in victory over A's

OAKLAND, Calif. — An excited-sounding Felix Hernandez credited some unusual scouting help for his return to dominance.

Hernandez was back to his old self Saturday, two-hitting the Oakland Athletics over eight innings of a 4-0 Mariners win that has pushed the division rivals to the brink of falling out of contention. In the clubhouse afterward, explaining the possible reasons for a revived mound form not seen since April, the 21-year-old threw out a tribute to a Web site run by Mariners fans.

On June 27, the "U.S.S. Mariner" site had published an open letter to Seattle pitching coach Rafael Chaves, imploring him to get Hernandez to throw fewer fastballs early on. Chaves was handed a printout of the Internet posting, which contained detailed analysis of Hernandez's pitch sequences, by someone in the stands and later showed it to the pitcher.

"Chaves gave me a report," Hernandez said. "On the Internet, they say that when I throw a lot of fastballs in the first inning, they score a lot of runs. And so I just tried to mix all my pitches in, first inning through the eighth inning."

But when asked whether he'd be reading the Internet more often, Hernandez quickly quipped: "No."

Chaves later clarified that while he had, indeed, shown Hernandez the posting, it was merely to reinforce what he'd already been telling his prize pupil.

"It was nothing but reinforcement of the talks we've had in the past," Chaves said. "I just wanted to make Felix aware that, 'It's not a secret around baseball that you have a tendency to get into patterns. We all get scouted, and folks will figure you out unless you make your own adjustments. It's going to be easy to predict what you're going to be doing out there to begin with.' "

On Saturday, Oakland managed just a bloop single in the fifth inning by second baseman Mark Ellis and an infield hit off Hernandez's hand by left fielder Shannon Stewart in the sixth. By that point, Hernandez already had all the run support he would need for his 116-pitch effort after Adrian Beltre hit a three-run homer in the second off A's starter Rich Harden.

"Felix is getting back into his game, where he was the first part of the year, before he had his setback," Mariners manager John McLaren said. "He's getting more confidence."

Jose Vidro scored an additional run on a third-inning groundout as the Mariners knocked Harden — who was on a pitch count of 65 in his first start since straining his shoulder April 15 — from the game early. The crowd of 29,225 fans at McAfee Coliseum looked on helplessly as Hernandez allowed just one runner to reach second base.

That came when Hernandez issued his second walk of the game in the sixth with Stewart already on first. But Hernandez then notched his first strikeout of the day against Jack Cust to end the Oakland threat.

"He's got the best stuff in the game," Ellis said. "Very good. Very talented."

George Sherrill worked a perfect ninth inning for the Mariners, who will try to get to a season-high 13 games over .500 today in the final contest before the All-Star break.

The A's badly need a win to split a series in which the Mariners have taken the last two games after dropping the opener. Another win by the Mariners would possibly send Oakland to the break some 10 games behind in the American League West, and another nine out in the wild-card standings.

Even with Oakland's tradition of second-half runs, the odds of overcoming such gaps are highly remote.

Seattle continues to roll, buoyed by an improved starting rotation and the best back-to-back efforts by Hernandez since his April elbow injury.

"Actually, when I throw my breaking balls a lot more I think my fastballs get better," Hernandez said. "Again, it's important for me when I mix all my pitches."

Chaves said he'd received the Web site's open letter from a fan.

"It was just a person in the stands," he said. "A person who cares about the Mariners and cares about baseball in particular. I don't even know who he is."

Chaves also had a copy of the posting e-mailed to him by Jason Churchill, a freelance newspaper contributor who runs his own baseball Web site detailing Mariners farm prospects.

"The one person is not telling me, or telling us, something that we don't know," Chaves added. "It's just that we ... I don't know it all. That's for sure. I'm making sure that you guys understand he didn't give me something that I was not aware of.

"But it's good that sometimes you hear something from a different source," he said of Hernandez. "It opens up your eyes a little bit."

And once Hernandez listened, the A's were the only ones opening their eyes — big and wide.

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

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