Winning contagious for Lackey, Angels

SEATTLE -- Luckily for the Seattle Mariners, Angels right-hander John Lackey was sick Monday night, pitching with symptoms consistent with strep throat -- coughing, sneezing, fever, difficulty swallowing.

Who knows what Lackey would have done had he been feeling better. A no-hitter? A perfect game?

As it was, Lackey threw a seven-hit shutout to lead the Angels to a 6-0 victory at Safeco Field in the opener of a three-game showdown between the American League West rivals.

Lackey struck out five and walked none in a 109-pitch effort that improved his record to 16-8 and pushed his team’s division lead over Seattle to three games, ensuring that the Angels will still be in first place when they leave town Wednesday afternoon.

It also left the Mariners wondering what they could do to puncture Lackey’s air of invincibility. In three starts against them this season, he is 3-0 and has given up no runs and 18 hits in 24 innings. No calculator needed to compute Lackey’s earned-run average against Seattle: 0.00.

“That’s an incredible effort by John,” Manager Mike Scioscia said. “Seattle has a terrific offensive club that can beat you in many ways, but he set the tone early by keeping guys off base. He pitched a terrific game. Under the circumstances, with him under the weather, it was a great effort.”

Lackey, through a team spokesman, said he began to feel sick Sunday night, but he was never in jeopardy of missing Monday’s start. Not with so much at stake.

“As the game was going on, I felt weaker and weaker,” said Lackey, who relied primarily on his two-seam sinking fastball. “But I kept battling through.”

Outside of the Angels’ athletic trainers’ spraying some kind of cough-medicine concoction in the back of Lackey’s throat, there wasn’t much the team could do to aid Lackey between innings.

“Just a lot of fluids,” Scioscia said. “And plenty of rest.”

Some early runs didn’t hurt. Garret Anderson, continuing his recent hot streak, crushed a solo home run off Seattle starter Miguel Batista in the second inning and a two-run double in the third to give the Angels a 3-0 lead.

Jeff Mathis’ suicide squeeze bunt made it 4-0 in the fourth, and the Angels added two more runs in the sixth when Maicer Izturis tripled, Kendry Morales singled, Howie Kendrick doubled and Morales scored on a wild pitch to make it 6-0.

Lackey has a reputation as a big-game pitcher -- he won Game 7 of the World Series as a rookie in 2002 -- and he only grew in stature Monday.

“What he did speaks volumes,” Angels pitching coach Mike Butcher said. “Everyone knew he was hurting, that he was not up to par, but he made pitches and battled through it. It shows all the dedication he has between starts.

“From day one of the season, throughout the winter, he prepares himself to pitch for a whole season, and his strength took over tonight. Mentally, you can’t break this guy. He’s mentally tough. And physically, he puts in all the work he needs to do.”

Nothing could rattle Lackey on Monday night, but the Mariners seemed a little spooked.

A mere four outs into Seattle’s most meaningful late-season game in six years, the Mariners lost their cool. Ichiro Suzuki foul-tipped strike three to lead off the bottom of the first, and Manager John McLaren, believing the ball hit the dirt before catcher Mathis caught it, came out to argue with home plate umpire Gary Darling.

After going back to the dugout, McLaren gestured to third base umpire Jerry Meals and was ejected. McLaren headed back to the field and went jaw to jaw with Meals, the manager so agitated and animated he looked like a human bobblehead doll.

If the outburst was meant to fire up his team, well, it didn’t quite have the same effect as John Belushi’s “Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?” battle cry in “Animal House.”

The Mariners mounted only one serious scoring threat against Lackey, putting runners on first and third with one out in the third. But Jose Vidro grounded to first, and Morales caught Jose Lopez too far off third.

Lopez was eventually tagged out in a rundown. Jose Guillen, with runners on second and third, popped to short to end the inning, and Lackey cruised the rest of the way, drawing the admiration of his pitching coach.

“I wanted to kiss him, but I held off tonight,” Butcher said, knowing Lackey could be contagious. “Just a hug.”

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mike.digiovanna@latimes.com