Mariners Get to Cooper, 6-4

The Angels’ pursuit of the Seattle Mariners bears a tinge of desperation, even now, with so much 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 very young arms in its rotation.

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. The Angels will play tonight to split the four-game series.

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.

Before they lost, however, the Angels left the bases loaded in the sixth inning, flied to the 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.

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

Rodriguez had a two-run homer in the first inning and, after he led off the fifth with a solo homer, the Mariners did lead, 3-2. But, typically, one-run leads against the Angels have little or no shelf life.

The problem was Angel starter Brian Cooper (3-3) couldn’t reestablish his best sinker.

So after Rodriguez homered over both bullpens in left field to start the fifth inning, the baserunners kept coming.

Edgar Martinez singled to left 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.

Then David Bell hit a one-strike changeup for a three-run home run and a 6-2 Mariner lead.

When Bell hit the pitch, ending Cooper’s ninth start, rookie catcher Bengie Molina slapped the dirt behind home plate with his mitt.

Cooper, himself a rookie, dropped his head, exited the game, and eventually found a vacant place on the Angel bench, where he sat and held his face in 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.

Five days before, Cooper shut out Oakland on three hits. 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.

Wednesday he needed help, but the Angels couldn’t bail him out.

Anaheim did score twice in the sixth to make it 6-4, when they had four consecutive two-out hits.

With Garret Anderson at first base, Molina singled to left field and Kennedy grounded a single to shortstop Rodriguez’s backhand that loaded the bases. Edgard Clemente, batting ninth, pushed a soft single into right field that scored Anderson. Erstad then hit a chopper off the plate that McLemore could not field, Molina scored and the Angels were within 6-4.

Right-hander Brett Tomko came out of Seattle’s bullpen to relieve starter John Halama (7-5), and he got Benji Gil to pop to McLemore on a one-strike pitch. Halama, a left-hander who had lost four of his previous five decisions, allowed two earned runs in 5 2/3 innings.

*

Quiet Stars

Erstad and Glaus make the American League All-Star team, and with all the outward glee expected from two of the Angels’ least garrulous players. They both have a chance to start. Page 8