Major League Baseball
Batista helps Mariners blank A's
By TSN
Sep 18, 2007, 5:13 GMT

Oakland, CA - Miguel Batista pitched the first 6 1/3 frames of a seven-hit shutout, as Seattle blanked Oakland, 4-0, at McAfee Coliseum.

Batista (14-11) scattered five hits and four walks with six strikeouts to take the victory.

'It's important for me because I was stuck on 13 wins for a long time,' said Batista, who won for the first time since August 17. ' It was good for me to get my good pitching going because between (Jarrod) Washburn, Felix (Hernandez) and that's a lot of responsibility to get our starting rotation going. We need to keep that consistently next year if we want to go anywhere.'

Jose Lopez's three-run home run in the top of the seventh extended the lead to the final margin, 4-0. Jose Vidro and Kenji Johjima each singled prior to Lopez's homer off Dan Haren (14-8), who fell to 0-4 in his last five starts.

'I'm tinkering on a fine line of being too aggressive and challenging too much rather than falling behind,' Haren said. 'Today I was pretty aggressive, I gave up a few hits but also got a lot of early outs which led to me getting deeper in the game. I kept us in it. The home run obviously was a big blow but what are you going to do?'

Ichiro Suzuki finished 2-for-5, extending his hitting streak to 10 games for Seattle, which snapped a two-game losing streak. The Mariners are a long shot to make the playoffs, sitting 6 1/2 games behind the New York Yankees in the AL wild card race.

Jack Cust doubled for Oakland, which has lost two straight overall and six of seven at home to Seattle this season.

In the fifth, Johjima singled to deep third, but instead of eating the ball Jack Hannahan misfired a rushed throw to first and Johjima took second. The catcher later scored on Yuniesky Betancourt's two-out single to right.

The Athletics wasted Cust's lead-off double in the fourth then left two more runners on in the sixth. Back-to-back singles from Donnie Murphy and Shannon Stewart put runners on first and second with one out in the seventh before Daric Barton and Nick Swisher each flied out.

Game Notes

Haren pitched eight innings for the first time since May 30. His earned run average on June 9 stood at 1.58, and reached 3.12 following Monday's loss...Batista won for the first time since August 17. The right-hander has a lifetime 4-1 record with a 1.99 ERA over six starts in Oakland...Attendance was 17,228.

© 2007 The Sports Network

Game Notes

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