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Mariners top Red Sox

Aug 14, 2011 - 11:50 PM Seattle, WA (Sports Network) - Casper Wells hit a solo homer, Charlie Furbush pitched seven strong innings and the Mariners beat the Red Sox, 5-3, on Sunday to deny Tim Wakefield's latest attempt to earn his 200th career win.

Ichiro Suzuki collected two hits and scored a run for the Mariners and Mike Carp had an RBI single to extend his hitting streak to 14 games, the longest for a Seattle rookie since Ichiro in 2001.

Furbush (3-4) allowed one run on four hits and two walks while striking out six and improved to 2-1 in four appearances since being acquired from Detroit last month.

"I've faced these guys before, so I kind of had a few things I wanted to stick to in certain situations, with certain counts with certain hitters," said Furbush. "The changeup, curveball and slider all seemed to be pretty effective today."

Kevin Youkilis hit a two-run homer off Jeff Gray in the eighth inning, pulling Boston within 5-3, but Brandon League struck out two in a perfect ninth to earn his 29th save.

Wakefield (6-5) tossed his first complete game of the season -- and 33rd of his career -- but took the loss after giving up nine hits and two walks. The 45-year-old knuckleballer is winless in his last four starts since July 24 and stuck on 199 victories.

"I felt great. Obviously the results weren't what I wanted them to be, but I was able to go eight," said Wakefield. "They made some great defensive plays on our offense today. We squared up a lot of balls that were hit right at guys, but other than that Furbush pitched pretty good."

The Mariners captured the last two games of this three-game series to end Boston's team-record streak of seven consecutive winning road trips.

The Red Sox went 3-3 on a six-game trek, trimming their lead over the Yankees for first place in the AL East to a half-game. The Yankees were rained out Sunday.

Seattle won two of three series against the Red Sox this year but still lost the overall season series, 5-4, mostly due to a three-game Boston sweep last month.

No one had a baserunner until Furbush walked Carl Crawford to lead off the third. Crawford stole second base, but was stranded there. The Mariners then got their first runner in the bottom of the third, also on a leadoff walk to Casper Wells.

It touched off a three-run rally that included RBI singles from Jack Wilson and Carp, and a sacrifice fly from Franklin Gutierrez.

Adrian Gonzalez hit a one-out single in the fourth and the Red Sox loaded the bases on a Youkilis walk and David Ortiz single. Jed Lowrie followed with a sacrifice fly to pull Boston within 3-1.

Seattle pushed its lead to 5-1 on Dustin Ackley's RBI single in the fifth and Wells' leadoff homer in the sixth.

Game Notes

Wakefield is trying to become the 108th pitcher with 200 career wins, but the 89th in modern history (since 1900)...The Mariners have won three of their last four games overall...Ichiro had hitting streaks of 16, 21 and 23 games as a rookie in 2001. He extended his own hitting streak to 10 games on Sunday...Youkilis hit his 17th home run and Wells got his seventh.