BoSox’s Beckett baffles Mariners

BOSTON — The Seattle Mariners’ visit to Boston was just two games. It probably felt much longer. The Mariners were shut out by the Red Sox 5-0 on Tuesday. Seattle finished with just four hits as Boston starter Josh Beckett struck out a season-high nine batters. Seattle had a total of 12 hits in the in the short series and was outscored 11-1. “We’ve got to do a better job of working it on down the line and trying to get the ball rolling from one hitter to the next and on down,” manager Eric Wedge said. There was no rolling Tuesday against Beckett (3-4), who redeemed himself less than a week after being booed off the mound by pitching his best game of the season. Beckett scattered four hits over seven innings before being pulled as a steady rain started to fall late in the afternoon. The game started with Beckett striking out Dustin Ackley and seemed to only get worse for the Mariners, who struck out twice in the second and three times in the third. “Give him credit. He did his job,” said Justin Smoak, who felt he was robbed of a home run in the second. “But we feel like we could have done a little better than what we did.” Smoak hit a long shot to the right-field corner in the second, but it was ruled a foul ball. After a video review, it was still ruled foul, although Smoak felt from his view that it went over the pole, not to the right of it. “I think it always makes a difference if you can jump out to a lead and then work from there,” Wedge said. Instead, the game remained scoreless until David Ortiz led off the third with his eighth homer of the season, a shot that landed in the Boston bullpen. The Mariners fell to 1-4 on a 10-game road trip and were shut out for the fifth time this season. Blake Beavan (1-4) went four innings, allowing three runs on five hits and two walks. Ichiro Suzuki was the only Seattle player with more than one hit, singling twice. A couple of defensive blunders, including a missed foul popup and blown double-play, also didn’t help. “We cost ourselves a couple of runs with the defense today. No doubt,” Wedge said. “No errors, but we make a couple of plays there it saves us a couple of runs and in that type of ballgame that’s a considerable difference.” Boston added two more runs in the fourth when Cody Ross walked with one out, Daniel Nava singled and Aviles hit an RBI double. Nava scored on Ryan Sweeney’s groundout. Ortiz caught the Mariners — and everybody else at Fenway Park — off-guard when he laid a bunt down the third-base line for a leadoff single in the fifth. Seattle’s infield was shifted toward the right and nobody had a chance to field the ball in time. Ortiz advanced to second when Adrian Gonzalez hit a grounder and shortstop Munenori Kawasaki pulled his foot off second base before throwing out Gonzalez at first. Ortiz took third on Charlie Furbush’s wild pitch to Will Middlebrooks, who followed with a line drive single.