Long Balls Propel M’s to Series Win

Less than a day after Jamie Burke was called up to the big league team, he went 2-4 with his third career home run and helped the Mariners beat the Twins for the second night in a row.

Seeing Burke’s bat show some life just further convinced me that Rob Johnson should not be getting playing time on this team. Jose Lopez and Russell Branyan also homered off of Minnesota starter Kevin Slowey. Lopez also had an RBI double and a single, showing a little bit more promise that his bat will start to heat up.

Erik Bedard took the hill for the M’s today, struggling through five innings of two-run ball. In his five innings of work Bedard walked four, struck out four, and surrendered four hits. He picked up the win, bringing his record up to 5-2. Not a good performance by Erik, but it could have been a lot worse if not for his ability to overcome a lack of command.

The bullpen did a great job tonight. Batista, Olson, Lowe, and White each worked a shutout inning, White picking up his first career save. It’s nice to know that someone in the pen besides Aardsma can close games. He did allow two base runners, but he did have to face the toughest part of their order and was able to retire the big M’s (Mauer, Morneau).

Other news, series notes:

Ichiro’s hitting streak is now at: 2 games.

Tyler Johnson was released, Denny Stark was DFA’d.

This was our third consecutive series win.

Day off tomorrow, we start a three game series with Baltimore on Tuesday.

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