On most days, Cubs manager Don Baylor would have refrained from sending his starter back to he mound after 111 pitches.
But this wasn’t most starters. It was Mark Prior.
And Prior justified Baylor’s faith by striking out the side in his final inning.
“He got better as the game went on–if you can believe that,” Baylor said.
In the Cubs’ first game in Seattle, Prior dazzled a sellout crowd of 46,083 at Safeco Field by firing seven shutout innings in his team’s 2-0 victory over the Mariners.
Kyle Farnsworth and Antonio Alfonseca preserved the five-hit shutout, and Sammy Sosa and Fred McGriff provided all the offense with home runs. Sosa’s sixth-inning shot off right-hander Joel Pineiro broke a scoreless tie.
“Once he got the 1-0 lead, he took charge,” Baylor said of Prior. “He was in total command.”
McGriff doubled the Cubs’ lead in the eighth by ripping Pineiro’s 3-2 curveball into the right-field seats.
That was all that Prior & Co. needed.
Prior, in his fourth big-league start, struck out a career-high 11 batters and walked only one.
“I had a better mental approach than I did the first couple of games,” he said. “I felt like I got back to my old self again.”
Prior, who won’t turn 22 until September, said he lost his focus in his last start against Houston by worrying too much about his opponent in the batter’s box.
“I was looking at hitters and getting too wrapped up in having seen these guys on TV,” he said. “Tonight I made a conscious effort not to look above their waist–just stay focused on Joe [Girardi’s] glove.”
Prior, who finished with 124 pitches, 86 for strikes, used his devastating array of 96-m.p.h. fastballs, sharp curves and hypnotizing changeups to work out of two jams.
John Olerud led off with a double in the second before Ruben Sierra crushed Prior’s 3-1 fastball to deep center field. Fortunately for Prior, Corey Patterson got a great jump on the ball and caught up to it on the warning track.
After Prior walked Mike Cameron, shortstop Desi Relaford lined a shot to right-center field. Patterson, showing superb range, made the catch. Prior struck out Dan Wilson to end the threat.
The Mariners’ first two batters reached in the fourth. Bret Boone beat Bill Mueller’s throw from third base on a grounder down the line and Olerud followed with a bloop single to left.
With runners at the corners, Prior went to work. He induced a foul pop from Sierra, blew a 2-2 fastball past Cameron and got Relaford to pop up.
Prior (2-1) then allowed just one hit over his final three innings.
The Cubs entered Friday with a .232 batting average. Their lowest for a full season is .238, set in both 1963 and 1985.
They got just seven hits in the game, but the Cubs didn’t even need half that many. That’s how well Prior pitched.
