Mariners End Their Losing Streak And Jays Win Streak With 5-1 Victory

Shaun Marcum worked through the Seattle Mariners unscathed for five innings and considered himself lucky. Eventually, however, an inability to command his fastball caught up with him, and the Toronto Blue Jays’ five-game win streak came to an abrupt end.

“They hit balls hard right at people — I was fortunate to get through that,” the right-hander said Sunday afternoon, after he was battered for four runs during a sixth inning he couldn’t escape in a 5-1 loss.

“I wasn’t locating my fastball today and I didn’t in Baltimore (on Tuesday) either. It’s tough to pitch when you can’t throw that over for a strike and they can sit on everything else.”

A two-run homer by Jose Vidro followed soon after by Kenji Johjima’s two-run double helped the American League’s worst team avoid a season-worst eighth straight loss and a second consecutive sweep.

Jarrod Washburn, rumoured to be attracting interest from the Yankees, held the Blue Jays (53-52) in check for eight strong innings to ensure the Mariners (39-65) wouldn’t cough up another win the way they did in Friday’s 5-4 loss in 10 innings.

Toronto rallied from three deficits in that one but they never faced as big a hole as Marcum left them in Sunday before a crowd of 33,367.

“We made mistakes today,” said manager Cito Gaston. “When you make mistakes it doesn’t matter what team you’re playing in the big-leagues, they’re going to beat you.”

Making his second start since a bout of elbow soreness sidelined him for a month, Marcum looked to be back to his old self after allowing six runs over 4 2-3 innings Tuesday in Baltimore.

He was never in any serious trouble during the first five frames, although Kevin Mench helped him out by throwing out Jose Lopez at the plate to end the fourth as the runner tried to score from first on Jeremy Reed’s double.

Yet Marcum feels his progress has stalled and is searching for a way to improve command of his fastball before his next outing.

“I’ve got to work on it and locate like I did before the all-star break,” he said. “If I locate my fastball then everything else falls into place. I don’t know what it is right now, I’ve just got to figure it out, whether it’s something mechanical or not.”

John McDonald’s solo shot in the fifth — Washburn’s only major mistake of the day — briefly put the Blue Jays in position to keep on rolling. Then Marcum slammed into the wall and the Mariners capitalized.

“The way it was going, the third, the fourth inning, you started feeling that it was going to be a low-scoring ballgame,” said McDonald. “It turned out to be 5-1, that’s not a lot of runs, but we obviously have got to give him more support than that.”

Ichiro Suzuki — who also singled in the third and tripled in the ninth to move within two hits of 3,000 between his career in Japan (1,278) and the majors (1,720) — opened the sixth with a walk and came around when Vidro lined a 1-0 offering over the wall in right.

Raul Ibanez kept things going with a single and after an Adrian Beltre groundout, Lopez walked, Reed hit into a fielder’s choice — Marco Scutaro fielded the ball at second and tagged Lopez but got tripped up trying to make the relay to first allowing Reed to reach and keep the inning alive — and Johjima doubled to right-centre for a 4-1 lead.

“(Scutaro) didn’t have his hand in there, it was just a mistake he made,” said Gaston. “It’s going to happen. We thought it was a double play, I’m pretty sure he thought he was going to get a double play, too, it just didn’t work out.”

That was all for Marcum and the win streak.

Washburn, who gave up just four hits and two walks all game, allowed just one more hit after the rally while J.J. Putz shut the door in the ninth. The Mariners rounded out the scoring in the seventh on Lopez’s RBI single off Shawn Camp.

“I don’t know if anything is going to happen,” Washburn said of the rumours. “It’s been on my mind but it’s nice to get out there and be able to forget about it for a while.”

The Blue Jays finish the season 4-5 versus Seattle, but while Gaston was disappointed with the loss, he was able to find a positive.

“That’s what you have to do,” Gaston said of sweeping teams like the Mariners, “but if we take two out of three the rest of the way, I’ll be real happy too.”