TJ Cotterill
The News Tribune
SEATTLE — If Scott Servais was waiting for the Seattle Mariners’ offense to finally find its long-lost spark, he’ll need to wait some more.
Offense is what the Mariners want.
Wins are what they need.
And they got the latter with just barely enough of the former thanks to Cameron Maybin’s leadoff triple and Dee Gordon’s go-ahead sacrifice fly in the fifth inning. Erasmo Ramirez and the Mariners bullpen continued to shut down the team with the fewest wins in the major leagues from there for a 2-1 victory on Monday at Safeco Field.
“We have to score runs to win,” Maybin said. “But it’s going to take everybody now this time of the year. Coming down the stretch it’s going to take a team effort. We have to go out and have fun and at the end of the day see where the chips fall.”
Gordon’s sacrifice fly is an example of that. He’s mired in a .273 season batting average that has knocked him to ninth in the order, but he made the winning play in this one — even if it didn’t help his individual stats.
And the Mariners (77-61) really can’t afford many more losses with now 24 games remaining in the season. Especially after earlier Monday the Oakland Athletics beat the Yankees. The A’s lead on Seattle remains at 5 1/2 games for the American League’s final wild card.
“We got to keep it rolling,” Mariners manager Scott Servais said. “Not a lot of offense to talk about tonight, but the story of the day was pitching — and we had just enough to get it done.”
And they had plenty from the backend of the bullpen. Edwin Diaz closed out the ninth by striking out the side for his major-league leading 52nd save and needs 10 more to tie the single-season major league record held by former Angels closer Francisco Rodriguez.
The Mariners are 61-0 this year when Diaz enters the game with a lead, even if this took him 23 pitches.
“They battled in their ABs,” said Diaz, on the same day his manager debuted his Diaz-style haircut at Safeco Field and a section was set up for fans to line for the haircut as well.
“But I still won them.”
Ramirez was run after just three innings for seven runs his previous start in San Diego, but he rolled through the Orioles’ lineup on Monday.
Except 24-year-old Orioles lefty Josh Rogers was rolling, likewise, through the Mariners’ offense.
Remind anyone of last week, when the Mariners were shut down by a pair of Padres rookies? Rogers was making his second career start after arriving from the Yankees in a trade that sent coveted lefty reliever Zach Britton.
And Baltimore struck first when Ramirez allowed just the second hit of his outing — a line-drive solo home run off of the right-field foul pole from Jonathan Villar to lead off the fourth inning.
The Mariners responded by doing what they do worse than any team in the major leagues this season: draw a walk.
No, not Jean Segura. He’d only drawn 24 walks in 546 plate appearances entering Monday. He led off with a groundout.
But Robinson Cano and Nelson Cruz followed with back-to-back walks to set up Ryon Healy’s game-tying single (though Healy was thrown out diving into second base).
Then the Mariners hit two triples in the fifth inning, one from Maybin (who hadn’t recorded a hit since Aug. 17) and another from Mitch Haniger, who extended his career-high hit streak to 15 games.
Maybin scored the go-ahead run on Gordon’s sacrifice fly.
Servais said afterward that he had spoken with Maybin about not waiting for the perfect pitch at the plate.
“He was telling me to be more aggressive and it’s good to get that OK to be more aggressive,” said Maybin, who finished 2-for-3. “Today I was and I need to continue to work on it.”
The Mariners didn’t get anymore, coming after Servais said earlier in the day that a Mariners’ final postseason push would have to be driven by their offense.
But it was enough for Ramirez, who rebounded after a clunker of an outing his last start against the Padres, when he allowed seven runs and nine hits in three innings.
This time Ramirez was back to form, allowing the one run and two hits in 5 1/3 innings and 76 pitches. He’s allowed one earned run or fewer in four of his five starts since returning from the disabled list.
Servais turned to the bullpen with the Orioles order approaching the third time through in the lineup. Zach Duke, Nick Vincent, Alex Colome and Diaz kept it rolling from there with 3 2/3 scoreless innings of relief.
52 saves
Diaz is now tied with former Dodgers closer Eric Gagne (2002) for eighth-most saves in a single season in MLB history, picking up his 52.
And he again struck out the side, pushing his season strikeout total to 115 for the season He entered the day only trailing Brewers All-Star Josh Hader for most strikeouts by a reliever this season and Hader had 113.
And it came on the night the Mariners had a section dubbed “Electric Eddie’s Barbershop” named because Diaz won a bet with Servais — if he saved 50 games, the 51-year-old Servais would get the same haircut as the 24-year-old Diaz with the lines shaved into the side of his head.
Diaz completed that more than a week ago in Arizona and Servais got the haircut in San Diego last week.
But fans could get the same haircut at Safeco Field on Monday.
“I heard a lot of people came to get the haircut,” Diaz said. “I feel pretty happy about that. I heard a lot of people while I was in the bullpen yelling, ‘Diaz, Diaz, see my haircut?’ They were looking good.”
Diaz is now one of just eight relievers in MLB history with at least 52 saves and he needs 10 more to tie former Angels closer Francisco Rodriguez’s single-season record of 62 saves.
Ramirez right
Erasmo Ramirez’s game plan was obvious: throw a lot, a lot of strikes.
Of the 11 pitches he threw in the second, all were strikes. Through that frame he had thrown 24 of 28 pitches in the zone.
“The main part was just attack,” Ramirez said. “Attack the hitters and show them you are going to attack everyone and play around the strike zone, and today was the point — go and execute every pitch.”
And his velocity was up, too (back between 91-92 mph) from his previous start (89-91) — a three-inning clunker in a bad loss to the San Diego Padres last week. He allowed seven runs and nine hits in those three frames.
Another last-place team, another opportunity. Against the Orioles Ramirez pitched 5 1/3 innings and allowed two hits, one run, with no walks and five strikeouts. He exited with the bases empty after inducing a leadoff groundout in the sixth only because the Orioles had the top of the order due for the third time.
Other than that Padres stinker, Ramirez had allowed one run or fewer in each of his four other starts since returning from the disabled list on Aug. 12.
