Ichiro Comes Through Big To Beat Boston

Ichiro’s trademark stance (Photo credit: sillygwailo)

When your team has been playing the way the Mariners have, it’s rarely a good thing to have a series with the Red Sox coming up.

It continued to look pretty bad for the first five innings too, Jakubauskas had surrendered four runs already and the M’s had squandererd several golden opportunities. Our only run had come on a solo shot by Ichiro.

But in the 6th, our luck changed just a bit. With runners on 1st and 2nd, Yuniesky Betancourt (who walked twice in the game!) weakly bounced a ball back to Jon Lester. Lester looked to 2nd base, appearing to have a double play in mind, but even though Pedroia was clearly on the bag, ready for the throw, Lester did a double take before turning to 1st base and just barely throwing out Yuni.

So now we had 2 runners in scoring position with 2 outs, with Guti coming to the plate. Jon Lester had made him look foolish in his previous two at bats, striking out swinging both times. But this time was another story, Guti muscled a 1-0 slider from Lester into center field, scoring two runs.

With the score now 4-3, Ichiro strolled to the plate, and pulled a 3-1 pitch into the right field seats for his second homer of the game, which happened to be in nearly the same place as his first one.

The score held at 5-4 up to the 9th inning, when David Aardsma took the mound in place of the temporarily demoted closer Brandon Morrow. Aardsma retired the first two batters with ease, before surrendering a 2-out single to J.D. Drew. After a long battle with Sox Slugger Jason Bay, he was able to end the game on a fly out, a fly out that was about five feet from giving Boston the lead.

The win last night put us at 17-19 on the season.

Tonight’s starters: SEA: G. Olson (0-0, 2.57) BOS: J. Beckett (3-2, 6.42)