Mariners Get to Cooper

The Angels’ pursuit of the Seattle Mariners bears a tinge of desperation, even now, with so much still to be settled.

Theirs is not the cool march of a veteran club, methodically taking series with pitching and defense, applying even pressure ahead. Their chase is ragged, edgy, emotional, the kind where pitching is too often optional.

It is a team still learning its walk, a team with rookies through the middle of its defense and some young arms in its rotation, and so the season seems to turn nightly.

The Mariners defeated the Angels, 6-4, Wednesday night at Edison Field, where 17,369 saw them fail to overcome three Mariner home runs and a brief start by right-hander Brian Cooper.

They fell seven games back of the Mariners in the American League West, so it matters only slightly that they’ve won at least as many games as the four teams that went to the AL playoffs last season. More importantly, they played the Mariners six times in the last nine days and lost four of them.

“It is frustrating, man,” Angel catcher Bengie Molina said. “We know nobody’s perfect, but it is frustrating when you’re losing games like that.”

Molina tried a wry smile and added, “Who knows? Maybe it’s something in the water.”

Before they lost, the Angels left the bases loaded in the sixth inning, flied to the outfield warning track three times in the eighth inning, the final time with a runner at second base, and batted three times in the ninth with the potential tying run at the plate.

It was their usual crack at something dynamic, with the crowd standing and the rally monkey bouncing. Sometimes it doesn’t work, if only by inches, and that is the ledge that uneven starting pitching requires them to walk.

“I think that’s going to come,” Molina said. “You’ve got to give some time to the kids.”

They will have it. Of that, Angel management is convinced. What remains to be seen is if the lessons will come in a pennant race, or out of it.

“Our starting pitching has to go out there, including myself, and put up three or four good starts in a row,” Cooper said.

Alex Rodriguez hit two home runs, the 23rd and 24th of his season, but they alone would not beat the Angels.

He hit a two-run homer in the first inning, a solo homer in the fifth and the Mariners did lead, 3-2, after his second one. But one-run leads against the Angels have the shelf life of the last beer in David Wells’ refrigerator.

So the big damage hadn’t come, and yet Cooper (3-3) wasn’t able to reestablish his best sinker. Rodriguez homered over both bullpens in left field to start the fifth inning, and then the baserunners kept coming.

Edgar Martinez singled to left field on a two-strike pitch and John Olerud had a broken-bat single to right. Stan Javier forced Martinez at third base for the first out of the fifth inning. Cooper wouldn’t see another.

David Bell hit a one-strike changeup for a three-run home run and a 6-2 Mariner lead. The pitch was up in the zone and split the strike zone.

When Bell hit the pitch that would mark the end of Cooper’s ninth start, rookie Molina slapped the dirt behind home plate with his mitt.

Cooper, also a rookie, dropped his head, and eventually found a vacant place on the Angels’ bench, where he sat and held his face with a towel for a long time. The worst start of his season--4 1/3 innings, nine hits, six runs, three home runs--had followed his best.

On Friday, Cooper shut out Oakland on three hits. This time, the occasional sinker fluttered high in the zone, and the Mariners didn’t miss them.

“It definitely was a problem for me,” Cooper said. “One pitch I’d be down there where I wanted to be, the next pitch I’d be up.”

He was aggressive with his sinker against the A’s, particularly early in the count, and he was again against the Mariners. Of his 88 pitches, 64 were for strikes, and he frequently pitched ahead, allowing many of his hits in pitchers’ counts.