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Rangers ace Padilla looks to pitch Rangers past Mariners

Jul 30, 2008 - 10:13 AM Seattle (40-66) at Texas (55-52) 8:05 pm. EDT

ARLINGTON, Texas (Ticker) -- Vicente Padilla can take another step toward pitching his way out of Texas when the Rangers face the lowly Seattle Mariners on Wednesday.

The Rangers have been hovering around .500 due to porous pitching, which is second to last in the majors with a 5.23 ERA. The futility was on display Tuesday as Texas' pitchers wasted a seven-run lead before Ramon Vazquez and the offense bailed them out in a 11-10 victory. Vazquez had a go-ahead, two-run double in the ninth inning, atoning for his three errors.

The Rangers can score with anyone, but they can't pitch with anyone, a big reason they are 11 1/2 games behind the major-league best Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (66-40) in the American League West and 5 1/2 games back of the Boston Red Sox (61-47) in the wild-card race.

Facing such a significant deficit , Texas is likely to be "sellers" at the trade deadline and Padilla's name has surfaced in trade rumors.

On Friday, Padilla (12-5, 4.56 ERA) was touched for five runs in the third inning, but settled down and allowed one hit over his final three frames in a 14-6 victory over Oakland. Prior to that, Padilla returned from a stint on the disabled list and threw seven scoreless innings in a 1-0 win over Minnesota. He is three wins shy of matching his career-high of 15 set in 2006.

Seattle, which has lost 14 of 21, sends Miguel Batista to the hill. Batista, who has spent time in the bullpen, is looking for his first win since throwing two scoreless innings on July 5. The righthander allowed two runs and seven hits in 5 1/3 innings, but did not factor in the decision in a 5-4 loss to Toronto on Friday.

Mariners star right fielder Ichiro Suzuki became the 29th player in professional baseball to record 3,000 hits on Tuesday. He became the first to accomplish the feat in two leagues. Suzuki is hitting. 548 (17-for-31) lifetime against Padilla.