Manager Lou Piniella didn’t expect it to be like this for his Seattle Mariners. Who did, with Randy Johnson pitching and the Kingdome rocking?
Nine innings into the postseason, the situation has come to this for the Mariners: Send Moyer, guns and money . . .
Behind Eric Davis’ two-run single and Geronimo Berroa’s home run, the Baltimore Orioles scored five runs in five innings off Johnson en route to a 9-3 victory before a stunned crowd of 59,579 Wednesday night.
Mike Mussina earned the victory as the American League East champions shrugged off a losing September to take an early advantage in the best-of-five division series. Now it’s up to former Cubs left-hander Jamie Moyer to give the Mariners a split of the two games in Seattle. He faces Scott Erickson in Thursday’s Game 2.
“You’ve got to win three games,” Piniella said. “Being home, certainly we would have liked to win our first game, but Moyer’s very capable, and so is (Jeff) Fassero. We expect to win the next two.”
Against the left-handed Johnson, manager Davey Johnson stacked the Orioles’ lineup with right-handed hitters. He benched Rafael Palmeiro, Roberto Alomar and B.J. Surhoff. And while Davis was the only one of the three replacements to get a hit, the unbalanced lineup produced seven hits in five innings.
Johnson, who relieved on Sunday to earn his 20th victory, retired only six of 16 hitters after Jerome Walton’s leadoff flyout in the third inning. The bottom of the Baltimore order started a one-run inning in the third and a four-run rally in the fifth.
Jeffrey Hammonds, the Orioles’ No. 8 hitter, walked and scored on No. 9 hitter Mike Bordick’s double in the third, giving Baltimore a 1-0 lead. Hammonds led off with a single in the fifth, then stole second when he broke on a pickoff throw. First baseman Paul Sorrento’s throw was wild, which seemed to rattle Johnson.
By the time the inning ended, the Orioles had taken a 5-1 lead. They scored on a single by Brady Anderson (the lone left-handed hitter in the lineup), a two-run single by Davis and Berroa’s opposite-field homer.
Johnson is 0-3 in four starts against Baltimore this year, and a bigger concern might be that he hasn’t been himself since missing four late-season starts with tendinitis in his middle finger.
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with him,” Piniella said. “He just didn’t have his good stuff tonight. You expect him to be perfect every time out there . . . but give their hitters credit.”
