M’s cruise to 7-2 win over Rockies

SEATTLE The Seattle Mariners don’t have many of these games.

You know, drama-free, nondescript, easy wins. On most nights, it’s an inning-by-inning grind that comes down to their final at-bat.

But on Saturday, the Mariners made it look simple, bashing four homers and getting decent starting pitching and solid relief work from the bullpen in a 7-2 victory over the Colorado Rockies.

The Mariners grabbed a 1-0 lead two pitches into the second inning. Robinson Cano jumped on a 1-0 sinker from Rockies’ starter Yohan Flande and hammered it off the facade of the upper deck in deep right for his 16th homer of the season.

Seattle continued to add on runs. With two outs in the third inning, Kyle Seager doubled to right-center and later scored on Nelson Cruz’s ground-ball single through the left side.

Flande was knocked out of the game in the fourth inning. Jesus Montero belted a solo homer over the wall in center field to make it 3-0. Seattle picked up another run when Shawn O’Malley advanced all the way to third on Nolan Arenado’s throwing error from his ground ball to third base, and scored on a perfectly executed suicide squeeze play. John Hicks dropped the bunt down to make it 4-0.

The Mariners probably should have had more. But with runners on first and second and two outs, Carlos Gonzalez made a pretty diving catch in the right-field corner to rob Cruz of a sure double.

The Mariners pushed the lead to 5-0 in the fifth inning. After being sidelined since Sept. 2 with pelvic pain, Franklin Gutierrez hit his 12th homer of the season a solo shot to right field off reliever David Hale.

A 5-0 lead should have been plenty for Seattle starter Roenis Elias, who had been cruising through the first five innings, allowing just one hit and striking out eight batters.

Although he picked up the win to improve to 5-8 on the season, his outing fell apart prematurely in the sixth inning. But the Mariners had enough of a cushion to withstand it.

It started trending downward when he couldn’t pick up a slow roller in front of the mound off the bat of Tom Murphy to start the inning. The fielding error clearly irked Elias. And from there, he walked the No. 9 hitter Brandon Barnes and leadoff hitter Christian Adames to load the bases.

Elias recorded his only out of the inning, getting D.J. LeMahieu to ground into a force play at second. With an expanded bullpen, McClendon then went situational instead of trying to let Elias fight through his issues. He brought in right-hander Logan Kensing to face the right-handed hitting Arenado. Kensing got an out on a sac fly with a run scoring. Then with the left-handed-hitting Gonzalez up, McClendon went to lefty David Rollins. The matchup worked Gonzalez grounded out to second to end the inning.

Cruz got the runs back for the Mariners in the bottom of the seventh. Following Kyle Seager’s single to right, Cruz bashed his 41st home run of the season, producing a majestic shot into the bullpens in left field.

That tied Cruz with Baltimore’s Chris Davis for the lead in all of baseball. It also tied Cruz with Alex Rodriguez’s total from 2001.

(c)2015 The Seattle Times

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