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Late rally pushes Mariners past slumping Orioles

Jun 6, 2007 - 7:12 AM SEATTLE (Ticker) -- It may only the beginning of June but Ichiro Suzuki is starting to believe his Seattle Mariners might be something special.

For the second consecutive night, Ichiro drove in the winning run late in the game when he capped a four-run rally in the seventh inning with an RBI double as the Mariners handed the Baltimore Orioles their fifth straight loss, 5-4, on Tuesday.

The win was Seattle's 11th in its last 15 games and put it a a season-high five games over .500 (30-25). It also got Ichiro thinking that his team has something working.

"There is some kind of atmosphere that this team has," Ichiro said. "I am not exactly able to put a finger on it but we definitely have something going on."

Early on, the Mariners had nothing going on. They trailed, 4-1, going into the bottom of the seventh before their dramatic come-from-behind win.

"In this stretch, everybody in the lineup has hit in clutch situations and come up with big base hits for us, Mariners manager Mike Hargrove said. Certainly Ichiro has been among the best and the last two nights he has come through with big hits for us with the game on the line.

Jose Guillen led off the seventh with a single off of reliever Danys Baez, who then walked Raul Ibanez and Kenji Johjima on eight straight pitches to load the bases with no outs.

Jamie Walker (1-1) relieved Baez and Jose Vidro hit a sacrifice fly scoring Guillen and sending Ibanez to third, where he scored on a wild pitch. Ben Broussard's infield single put runners at first and third and Yuniesky Betancourt extended his hitting streak to 17 games and tied the score, 4-4, with a single to left.

Chad Bradford took over for Walker and got Willie Bloomquist to hit into a fielder's choice for the second out. But Ichiro stroked a double to left to plate Broussard with the go-ahead run.

Jason Davis (1-0) pitched 1/3 of an inning for his first victory as a Mariner.

J.J Putz worked around a leadoff single in the ninth inning for his 15th save of the year.

The Orioles scored twice in the first inning off of Seattle starter Cha Seung Baek. With two outs, Nick Markakis singled and came around to score on a double by Miguel Tejada. Kevin Millar followed with a run-scoring double to left for a 2-0 lead.

Millar's second double scored Jay Payton to give Baltimore a 3-0 advantage in the third.

Baltimore starter rookie Brian Burres held the Mariners to just an infield single by Ichiro through the first four innings before Guillen singled with two outs in the fifth. Ibanez and Johjima followed with consecutive singles to cut the Orioles lead to 3-1.

We got a great job out of Brian Burres, Orioles manager Sam Perlozzo said. We just ran into trouble. We're going through a tough time right now. There's no masking it. Somehow we have to regroup and get everyone rested a little bit.

Walker, who had his first blown save of the year, said the Orioles just aren't catching any breaks during their slump.

"Look what happened last night (a 7-4 loss to the Mariners), the ground balls that get through and they end up scoring and tonight Ichiro gets that little blooper over third and they go ahead," Walker said. "But we can't be down. That other team could care two cents about whether we are snakebit or if you are unlucky."

A throwing error by Betancourt in the sixth gave Baltimore an unearned run to make it 4-1. Aubrey Huff led off with a double but remained at second while Baek retired the next two batters before being relieved by Eric O'Flaherty. Corey Patterson hit a routine grounder to short, but Betancourt threw wildly to first allowing Huff to score.