Bale struggles as Royals fall to Mariners 11-6

SEATTLE | Banny and Zack and … then what? Fade to black? The old Boston Braves could once yearn for two days of rain after Spahn and Sain. That works, too, even if it doesn’t rhyme.

What doesn’t work? John Bale. Not Tuesday, anyway. Nor Hideo Nomo. Nor Ron Mahay. Nor Yasuhiko Yabuta or Jimmy Gobble, for that matter.

If the Royals were due for a clunker from their pitching staff, well, this 11-6 loss to the Seattle Mariners certainly qualifies. The Royals saw their cumulative ERA spike from an MLB-best 2.46 to 3.10.

Yep, it was a bad night.

It seemed even worse, of course, coming after successive complete-game gems by Brian Bannister and Zack Greinke in 5-1 victories the two previous days against the Twins and Mariners.

Bannister and Greinke are each 3-0, which means the Royals are 2-6 when someone else starts after settling for a split in their two-game series at Safeco Field.

“Our pitchers are not going to be able to do it every day for us,” third baseman Alex Gordon said. “It’s our job to score more runs than the other team. It doesn’t matter how many we give up, we have to have the mentality that we’re going to score more than they do.”

That was a tall order in this case.

Every Seattle starter reached safely in a 13-hit attack. Ichiro Suzuki stretched his hitting streak against the Royals to 26 games by going two for four. José Lopez drove in four runs. Yuniesky Betancourt had three RBIs, while Kenji Johjima had three hits and two RBIs.

Bale, 0-3, pitched better than his numbers in losing his first two starts. Not this time. He lasted just one batter into the fourth inning and gave up five runs and seven hits.

“I just couldn’t get anything going,” he said. “I was struggling from the get-go. I just couldn’t get anything on the ball.”

Nomo was no better. He faced eight batters, and five reached safely. Final count: four runs, three hits and two walks in one-plus inning.

“It snowballed on Nomo pretty quick,” manager Trey Hillman acknowledged. “He left some pitches up, too. We had some untimely walks today, which have not been part of our first 13 games.”

The Royals issued six walks; four of those runners scored.

Mahay yielded a two-run double to his first batter and allowed another inherited runner to score before getting charged with a run of his own. Yabuta and Gobble combined to allow Seattle’s final run in the seventh.

Only Joakim Soria escaped. He worked a one-two-three eighth in a tune-up appearance.

The staff meltdown was sufficient to waste the Royals’ top offensive output of the season. They had not scored more than five runs in any of their previous 13 games.

“Some guys are starting to step up and swing,” Gordon said. “Hopefully, we can put it all together (tonight) when we get Los Angeles.”

Billy Butler had a walk and a sacrifice fly in five plate appearances, but his hitting streak ended at 13 games. Every other starter had at least one hit. Tony Peña had two hits for the second straight game after starting the season at one for 31.

Seattle starter Miguel Batista, 1-2, wasn’t particularly sharp, either. He lasted the minimum five innings necessary to get the victory while giving up four runs and seven hits.

It was good enough, even after reliever Ryan Rowland-Smith gave up two runs in the sixth. Sean Green pitched two scoreless innings before Mark Lowe picked up an ineffective Arthur Rhodes in the ninth.

The Royals opened the game with singles by David DeJesus and Mark Grudzielanek and turned them into a 1-0 lead on Butler’s sacrifice fly.

The lead lasted just two hitters into the Seattle first. Suzuki led off with a double and stole third before scoring on Lopez’s sacrifice fly to left.

Bale gave up two more runs in the second after José Vidro led off with a ground-rule double. Richie Sexson reached on a walk before Willie Bloomquist pushed an RBI single into right.

Betancourt made it 3-1 with a sacrifice fly to center. Three singles in the third extended the lead to 4-1 and matched the number of runs yielded by the Royals in 33 innings before Tuesday’s game.

The Royals pulled even by scoring three times in the fourth, but Bale and the bullpen couldn’t capitalize on the second chance.

The Mariners chased Bale in a two-run fourth and roughed up Nomo and Mahay in a four-run fifth. The bullpen had allowed just four runs in 31 previous innings this season. So maybe it, too, was overdue for a mulligan.

“When you have days like this,” Hillman said, “you try to keep it in perspective.”

And count the days. Bannister goes Friday in Oakland.

To reach Bob Dutton, Royals reporter for The Star, call 816-234-4352 or send e-mail to bdutton@kcstar.com