Yankees feast on Mariners bullpen, turn close game into rout By JOHN HICKEY P-I REPORTER NEW YORK -- The Mariners played halfway decent for half a game Tuesday. The other half? Don't ask. Seattle went from the cusp of breaking through against Yankees starter Chien-Ming Wang in the top of the fifth to buried by the bottom of the seventh as New York crushed the Seattle bullpen en route to a 12-3 victory. By game's end, the only suspense was whether a squirrel that made it up the right-field foul pole, then went to sleep, would survive his snooze without falling. He was still up there when the game ended. Don't look now, but this could become a Rally Squirrel, because he, or a cousin, showed up at a game last week, and the Yankees have won both. Already pictures of Rocky the Flying Squirrel are showing up in the stands at Yankee Stadium, a place that is generally disdainful of such things. On this night, the Mariners didn't fare as well as the squirrel, falling two games behind the Yankees, who lead the American League wild card race. That means the Mariners will leave town Wednesday either one game (if they win) or three games (if they lose) behind. "We have to win this one tomorrow and get out of here and get (Thursday's) day off," manager John McLaren said. "We're only two games out, and all we need to do is just get that streak we've been looking for. "We can win, get a day off and get rested." Wednesday is the conclusion of 20 games in 20 days, and the Mariners are dragging. Their bats looked the part Tuesday, but then they always do against Wang, who is 6-0 in six career starts (2.51 ERA) against Seattle. In the second inning, when Seattle starter Horacio Ramirez gave up the first of Jorge Posada's two homers, the Mariners were in trouble. But Ramirez held the damage to a single run through four innings, at which point the Mariners had managed all of one base runner. Things seemed to change when Wang, who owes his success to control and the ability to get the ball down in the strike zone and force ground balls, walked the first two men in the fifth, Adrian Beltre and Ben Broussard. That brought up Kenji Johjima, who delivered a single to left, fielded by Hideki Matsui. Third base coach Carlos Garcia should have held Beltre at third and taken his chances that the Mariners would have made something from the inning with the bases loaded and nobody out. He didn't. He waved Beltre home and the third baseman was out when Matsui's slightly off-line throw got to Posada at the plate on one bounce. McLaren, a third base coach under Lou Piniella for eight years, said he'd been through the ringer on plays like that dozens of times, but Garcia wasn't buying any of that, saying the manager's commiseration didn't make him feel all that much better. "It was my fault," he said. "I have to make a better decision there." Garcia said it was the kind of decision about which third base coaches beat themselves up. "You think about it, of course," he said. "The game could have been different if I made a different decision there. Now I've got to live with it." And so do all the Mariners, who quickly saw the game spiral out of control from that point. Alex Rodriguez hit a four-mile homer to make it 2-0 in the sixth, and Robinson Cano had one of his four hits to make it 3-0 later in the inning, knocking Ramirez out of the game. Wilson Betemit greeted reliever Eric O'Flaherty with an RBI single to make it 4-0. As bad as the sixth inning was, the seventh was off the charts. Brandon Morrow, Ryan Rowland-Smith and John Parrish threw in the seventh, with the Yankees getting eight hits and seven runs to put the Mariners on the canvas. The series finale pits Jarrod Washburn against Yanks rookie Phil Hughes. Washburn is 1-3 in his career at Yankee Stadium and Hughes, after a fast start, is winless in his past four games. It is a game that the Mariners need to have, even if it's not quite a must win. "If we can get out of here with a series win, that's what we wanted," McLaren said. "We need to start winning series again." Before the recent past -- nine losses in the past 10 games -- Seattle had gone 4-1-1 in its previous six series. "We've done it before," McLaren said. It's time to do it again. THE SCENE: A great night in the Bronx for baseball at 82 degrees, although great baseball wasn't necessarily played. STAR OF THE GAME: RHP Chien-Ming Wang limited the Mariners to one run through 7 1/3 innings, improving to 6-0 lifetime against Seattle. PLAY OF THE GAME: With the Mariners down 1-0 in the fifth and two on, C Kenji Johjima singled to left. 3B Adrian Beltre tried to score from second base, was thrown out and the Mariners wouldn't score again until the seventh, by which time the game was out of reach. THE ARMS: LHP Horacio Ramirez struggled, but he kept Seattle in the game for five innings. An Alex Rodriguez solo homer made it 2-0 in the sixth, and before the inning was over, it was 4-0. The Yankees then scored seven runs on eight hits in the seventh inning off three pitchers -- RHP Brandon Morrow, LHP Ryan Rowland-Smith and LHP John Parrish. THE BATS: Seattle has never hit Wang well, and they didn't this time, either. Johjima's hit in the fifth was just the second for Seattle. After Beltre's 22nd homer in the seventh, the one bright spot was a two-run rally in the eighth with players coming off the bench, including rookie OF Wladimir Balentien's first big league hit, a two-run double. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/baseball/330351_mari05.html --

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