Baseball Notes: Hernandez shaky in Mariner’s win
A shaky Felix Hernandez allowed four earned runs in 2 1/3 innings before the Seattle Mariners rallied late to beat the Texas Rangers 9-8 on Sunday in Peoria, Ariz.
Making his second Cactus League start, Hernandez (1-1) allowed four hits and walked one, while striking out four. Hernandez opened the game by issuing a leadoff walk to former Spokane Indian Jurickson Profar before sandwiching a pair of strikeouts around a flyout by Prince Fielder.
Hernandez, however, wasn’t overly concerned at his pitching line.
“We’re in spring training, man,” he said. “I don’t look at any results.”
The 2010 American League Cy Young Award winner might have also had a bit of bad luck in the form of a couple of well-placed hits – a slow-rolling infield single and a flyball that dropped just in front of diving right fielder Corey Hart – as he worked through the Rangers’ lineup.
Fielder got the best of Hernandez in the third, though, when he lined a double that scored Elvis Andrus and sparked a four-run inning. Hernandez left the game one batter later after striking out Michael Choice, who reached on a wild pitch.
In between starts, Hernandez said he paid special attention to working on his changeup.
“Changeup was good, much better,” he said. “Feel was better. I think the mechanics were way better.”
Seattle’s reserves scored six runs in the eighth, erasing Texas’ five-run lead.
Orioles beat Pirates
Chris Davis had a long home run and three RBIs, J.J. Hardy hit a three-run shot and Wei-Yin Chen pitched three shutout innings to help the Baltimore Orioles beat a Pittsburgh Pirates split squad 9-2 in Sarasota, Fla..
Davis, a former Spokane Indian, has two homers and seven RBIs this spring for the Orioles.
Baltimore scored 20 runs in two games Saturday against Boston and is averaging nearly eight runs per game.
In his second Grapefruit League start, Chen gave up one hit and struck out two.
Red Sox top Pirates
Clay Buchholz pitched three hitless innings, Mike Carp hit a long homer and the Boston Red Sox beat a Pittsburgh Pirates split squad 4-1 in Bradenton, Fla.
Buchholz faced nine batters and got five outs on grounders. He walked one and struck out one.
Jackie Bradley Jr., trying to win the starting job in center field, gave the Red Sox a 2-0 lead in the second by grounding a two-run single into right field.
In the third, Carp hit his second home run of the spring onto the boardwalk in right-center.
Clearing the bases
Clayton Kershaw and Hyun-Jin Ryu will be the Dodgers’ starting pitchers in their two-game season-opening series in Australia against the on March 22-23…. Braves pitcher Kris Medlen left in the fourth inning with a strained forearm in the New York Mets’ 8-2 win over Atlanta.