Another game, another one-run loss

Cleveland series re-cap: 12 runs scored by the Mariners, 13 runs allowed.  Thirty-three hits (15 in the first game), eight walks worked by M’s bats.  Twenty-seven hits and eleven walks worked by the Indians’ line-up.  Home runs hit by the opposing teams: three for the M’s (including two three-run shots) to just one for the Indians.  Quality starts: two for the M’s, all three games by the Indians’ staff.  Number of blown saves by J.J. Putz: one.  And with last night’s 3-2 extra-inning heart breaker, the M’s dropped their eighth one-run game out of nine chances, scoring four runs or less for the 18th time on the season out of 29 chances.

Sigh.

After a seven-run explosion to win in dramatic late-inning fashion on Tuesday’s game, the M’s demoted Greg Norton and Brad Wilkerson, while adding young upstarts Wladimir Balentien and Jeff Clement to the roster, a move that was supposed to generate increased offense for a team ranking ninth in the league in runs scored (and fifth in runs allowed, adding insult to the 1-8 one-run record injury).  Instead, the five runs scored in the first two games since the roster moves don’t forebode well for any sort of impact on the M’s sorry offense.  (In contrast, the M’s scored as many runs in the ninth inning of the first game of the series as they did the proceeding two.)

So the M’s take their moribund offense to Yankee Stadium, for their next-to-last series at the legendary ballpark.  Chien-Ming Wang is taking the hill for the Yanks, with his 5-0 start to the season and his undefeated mark in six career starts against the M’s.  Wang’s opponent on the mound, Erik Bedard, may have a 4-3 record and a serviceable ERA (3.45) in 31 innings, and is facing a Yankee line-up that is minus A-Rod and Jorge Posada, but who are we kidding.  The outcome is all but guaranteed: 2-1, Yankees win.