M’S End Skid At 4 Cora’s Streak Reaches 15 Games

The race may go to the swift, to the strong and the beastly, but in baseball there is still room for the slow and small.

And so the Seattle Mariners - a team built around power - lined up solidly behind Jamie Moyer and Joey Cora on Monday, riding strong performances from each to a 13-4 victory over the Anaheim Angels that snapped a four-game losing streak.

“One game, two game, three game, it don’t matter how long a losing streak is, it’s good to stop it,” Ken Griffey Jr. said. “Only problem I got now is Joey. He’s gonna want to bat third and Lou’s gonna put me in the leadoff spot.”

In the end, there were long home runs by Jay Buhner and Paul Sorrento, a two-run double by Griffey - who leads all of major league baseball with 52 RBIs and a boatload of hits in a six-run eighth inning that blew this one open.

But in the beginning, there was Moyer and Cora. And on Monday, they went a long way toward putting Seattle back in the win column for the first time in five games.

“I came to the ballpark today and told (coach) Lee Elia, ‘Joey’s playing well and swinging well, let’s keep him in there against the left-hander,”’ manager Lou Piniella said. “He’s hot, so we might as well ride our little Shetland pony… .”

Cora had a four of Seattle’s 17 hits and tossed in a sensational defensive play, and Moyer, the soft-throwing left-hander, who began the year on the disabled list, survived a shaky first inning and pitched well enough to improve his record to 4-0 by beating Mark Langston.

A dozen pitches into his fifth start of the season, Moyer looked like a man headed for a short night. A pitcher who relies on near pinpoint control, Moyer walked the first two batters he faced and gave up a 405-foot home run to the third, former Mariner Dave Hollins.

That put Seattle in a 3-0 hole, but it also seemed to snap Moyer out of whatever funk in which he’d begun the night.

“After he got down he settled down and pitched a very respectable game,” Piniella said.

After that first inning - when Langston set down the Mariners 1-2-3 and Moyer struggled - the battle of lefties went not to the swift but the wiley. Langston threw harder. Moyer went to his change-up, and as he slowed his pitches, he slowed an Angels offense that had produced seven consecutive victories.

An RBI single by Russ Davis and Cora’s two-run double in the second inning got Seattle even, and Langston and Moyer settled in to a battle of zeros.

Cora, whose second-inning double pushed his hitting streak to 15 games, broke the tie with a fifth-inning home run - the second of his career batting right-handed.

“He’s playing like he wants to play every day, and that’s fine with me,” Piniella said.

The Mariners broke loose for three more in the sixth inning to chase Langston, with Buhner hitting his sixth home run, a two-run shot. And then the Angels tested Moyer again.

Ahead 7-3, Moyer gave up three hits in the Anaheim sixth inning, and with one out the Angels had one run in and runners on second and third base. Cora, who’d rescued Moyer with his bat, used his glove this time.

Gary DiSarcina lifted a little pop fly toward right field that had the look of a two-run bloop single. On the run, his back to the infield, Cora made an over-the-shoulder catch that froze both runners. Moyer got Tony Phillips on a fly ball and that threerun Seattle lead was preserved.

Mariners 13, Angels 4

Seattle AB R H BI BB SO Avg. Amaral lf 6 0 1 1 0 1 .333 ARodriguez ss 5 1 1 1 0 1 .321 Griffey Jr cf 4 1 1 2 1 0 .337 EMartinez dh 4 2 2 1 1 1 .323 Blowers 1b 3 0 0 0 0 0 .205 a-Sorrento ph-1b 2 1 2 2 0 0 .288 DaWilson c 5 1 2 0 0 1 .312 Buhner rf 4 2 2 2 1 0 .216 RDavis 3b 5 2 2 1 0 0 .285 Cora 2b 4 3 4 3 1 0 .345 Totals 42 13 17 13 4 4

Anaheim AB R H BI BB SO Avg. Phillips dh 4 1 0 0 1 0 .296 Erstad 1b 3 1 0 0 1 0 .288 Hollins 3b 3 1 1 3 1 1 .301 Salmon rf 4 0 0 0 0 2 .248 Edmonds cf 4 1 1 0 0 0 .308 Leyritz c 4 0 2 0 0 1 .336 GAnderson lf 4 0 2 1 0 0 .356 Grebeck 2b 3 0 1 0 0 0 .189 DiSarcina ss 4 0 0 0 0 1 .232 Totals 33 4 7 4 3 5

Seattle 030 013 060 - 13

Anaheim 300 001 000 - 4

a-singled for Blowers in the 7th.

E-Erstad (3). LOBSeattle 6, Anaheim 6. 2B-Griffey Jr (9), RDavis (12), Cora (12), Grebeck (2). HR-Sorrento (5) off Watson; Buhner (6) off Langston; Cora (4) off Langston; Hollins (3) off Moyer. RBIsAmaral (10), ARodriguez (28), Griffey Jr 2 (52), EMartinez (28), Sorrento 2 (19), Buhner 2 (23), RDavis (18), Cora 3 (19), Hollins 3 (18), GAnderson (21). SB-ARodriguez (9). S-Grebeck. GIDPAmaral, Buhner 2.

Runners left in scoring position-Seattle 2 (Amaral, Griffey Jr); Anaheim 5 (Phillips 4, Edmonds).

Runners moved up-Leyritz.

DP-Anaheim 3 (Grebeck, DiSarcina and Erstad), (DiSarcina, Grebeck and Erstad), (Grebeck, DiSarcina and Erstad).

Seattle IP H R ER BB SO NP ERA Moyer W, 4-0 6 7 4 4 3 2 104 3.19 McCarthy 1 0 0 0 0 2 15 3.45 BWells 2 0 0 0 0 1 27 8.62

Anaheim IP H R ER BB SO NP ERA Langston L,2/3 5-2/3 6 7 6 4 3 94 5.01 PHarris 1-2/3 6 3 3 0 1 26 4.28 Watson 0 4 3 3 0 0 15 7.04 Hasegawa 1-2/3 1 0 0 0 0 16 6.03

Watson pitched to 4 batters in the 8th.

Inherited runners-scored-PHarris 2-1, Watson 2-2, Hasegawa 1-0.

WP-Moyer.

T-3:06. A-17,279 (34,687).

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Associated Press By Larry LaRue Tacoma News Tribune