Ichiro opens the game with a 13-game hitting streak - the 30th time in his career he's had a streak of 10 games or more.

He's also scored 899 runs in his career, and since 2001 onlny three players (ARod, Albert Pujols and Johnny Damon) have scored more.

The Mariners would love to have him score a handful tonight, but they're still struggling to find a consistent lineup that can give them production.

This is their 41st game - and their 36th new lineup.

It's Ervin Santana vs. Chris Jakubauskas. And we're off.

That was quick

Ichiro doubled to extend that hitting streak to 14 consecutive games, then scored his 900th career run on a one-out single by Ken Griffey Jr.

Junior now has 10 RBI for the season, getting him out of single digits, and his bat seems to be heating up.

After one: Mariners 1, Angels 0

Whittle 'em down

Jakubauskas retired 12 of the first 13 men he faced, gave up a double and two walks - and still got out of the inning without allowing a run.

In the meantime, the Angels are losing players. Vladimir Guerrero is on the disabled list, and after his first-inning ground out, Bobby Abreu left the game with a left big toe injury of unspecified seriousness.

Good pitching and a lineup that loses productive hitters? That's a combo that might help Seattle.

In the fourth: Mariners 1, Angels 0

Turn down the wind!

Jakubauskas has limited the Angels to two hits through five innings but hasn't seen his lead grow.

Why not?

The Mariners have only three hits against Santana - just one since the first inning. Part of it for both teams may be the weather. It's cool. No, actually, with a steady breeze it's damned cool, and hands get numb quickly in such an atmosphere.

Here in the fifth, Yuniesky Betancourt singled with one out, stole second and took third on catcher Jeff Mathis' throwing error.

The Angels brought their infield in, and Franklin Gutierrez struck out.

That brought up Ichiro, who popped out.

After five: Mariners 1, Angels 0

Batista time

Jakubauskas served up a six-inning reminder why he made this team, shutting the Angels out on two hits before running out of gas.

In the seventh: Mariners 1, Angels 0

Batista worked the seventh. Mark Lowe just worked the eighth inning - and the Mariners still lead, 1-0.

The ninth belongs to David Aardsma, and if can hold this lead, the Mariners will win their third 1-0 game of the season.

Pitching has been great, defense superb - this may be Betancourt's finest game of the season - and Griffey's RBI is the only run.

In the eighth: Mariners 1, Angels 0

Aardsma ends it
Mr. Aardsma pitched the ninth and has now one 9 1/3 consecutive scoreless innings with 11 strikeouts.

That's a final.

Mariners 1, Angels 0

The Mariners are running out another new-look lineup, trying to ignite a couple of hitters they badly need – Adrian Beltre and Wladimir Balentien.

Beltre has been moved from fourth to second in the batting order to give him a new look, perhaps a new feel at the plate. Balentien, for now, will bat cleanup.

Why?

“We look at Balentien as a power bat in the middle of the lineup in the future, and we’re going to put him there and see how he reacts,” manager Don Wakamatsu said. “We thought getting Adrian out of the 3-4 holes for a while might help him. He’s got to be a force in our lineup.”

Beltre hasn’t been, yet. Batting .205, he has only 15 RBI despite batting in the heart of the lineup all season. And Ken Griffey Jr., who’s hitting third again tonight, has only nine RBI for the season.

Here’s tonight’s lineup. Wakamatsu and his team have to hope the same guys hitting in different spots can somehow become a more productive group.
Ichiro RF
Beltre 3B
Griffey Jr. DH
Balentien LF
Russell Branyan 1B
Kenji Johjima C
Jose Lopez 2B
Yuniesky Betancourt SS
Franklin Gutierrez CF
Chris Jakuauskas RHP

Yesterday’s Results --- Standings --- Winner/Loser/Save
Tacoma (Off Day) --- 20-19, 3rd, -4.0 ---
at West Tenn 6, Birmingham 2 --- 15-22, 5th, -3.0 --- W-P. Ryan (2-3); S-N. Hill (1)
at High Desert 19, Rancho Cucamonga 8 --- 25-14, 1st, +3.0 --- W-J. Zapata (1-0)
at Wisconsin 2, Clinton 1 --- 20-18, 4th, -3.0 --- L-B. Lorin (3-1)

AAA Tacoma Rainiers (Pacific Coast League)
Rainiers Notes: The Rainiers took the first of a rare 2-day break from the season. Tacoma returns to action Thursday to start an eight-game homestand, hosting the Memphis Redbirds in the first of a fourgame series at Cheney Stadium. The Rainiers have won 9 of their last14 games and are coming off a 4-4 road trip against New Orleans (2-2) and Oklahoma City (2-2). Bryan LaHair and Prentice Redman are tied for the team lead with 10 home runs (T5th in the PCL) and the Rainiers are averaging 1.3 home runs per game. Jeff Clement recorded a hit in all 8 games during the recent road trip, combining to bat .429 (15x35) with 5 runs, 6 doubles, 2 home runs and 7 RBI. Redman has recorded a hit in 10 of his last 11 games to raise his season average to a team-best .324 (48x148). LaHair has hit 4 of his 10 home runs over the last 8 games. Mike Morse has a current 8- game hitting streak (.364/12x33) and hits in 11 of his last 12 games to raise his season average from .256 to .281.
Thursday’s probable starter:
RH Andy Baldwin (2-2, 3.43) vs. Memphis

=> Read more!

It's been a while since we've done a links post, and I have no other excuse than my sheer apathy and admit that it's kind of pain putting these things together -- neither of which are valid excuses. So instead of putting you to sleep with a 1,000 word post like I often do, let's do some links ...

From the News Tribune, your newspaper for the South Sound
Here's my game story from yesterday ... and the game notebook.

Here's the game story from the LA Times' Mike DiGiovanna

Columnist John McGrath believes the Mariners continue to come up short at shortstop. My weekly power rankings are at the bottom of it.

Here's my Sunday column that I wrote on the number of fake Red Sox fans that invaded Safeco this past weekend. Got plenty of emails and comments on it from people.

AUDIO: I forgot to post it over the weekend, I did my weekly segment with Ian Furness on Friday afternoon you can listen to it here.

I was also on with Brock and Salk on 710 ESPN on Friday morning. You can listen to it here.

Speaking of Mike Salk, he has a very interesting blog post comparing how the Mariners handled Brandon Morrow to how the Red Sox handled first-round pick Daniel Bard, who recently got called up. It's good stuff and something Mike and I talked about the other day at length.

Many people believe the Mariners will take UNC first baseman/outfielder Dustin Ackley with the second pick of the draft. Peter Gammons writes about him here.

The Boston Herald's Sean McAdam took a look at some Red Sox coaches who interviewed for the Mariners managerial job, including Terry Francona.

Former Mariners updates ...

Randy Johnson will start on Friday at Safeco Field looking for win 299, KC Star and SI columnist Joe Posnanski has as a column about Johnson and reaching the milestone.

Joel Pineiro tossed his first shutout in quite a while for the Cardinals

Jeremy Reed had a tough error the other night to lose the game. Here's the story on the game where the Mets fell apart.

Around the AL West
The Rangers finally got beat -- by Dontrelle Willis of all people.

Sports Illustrated's Tom Verducci believes the Rangers are for real.

Here's 5 reasons why the Rangers are successful according to Jim Reaves.

Is Eric Chavez's career in crisis?

Is the A's Bob Geren, the next manager that will be fired?

Around baseball ...
Yahoo's Jeff Passan checks in with the Nats on Stephen Strasburg and they say he won't pitch in the big leagues this season.

Speaking of the draft, here's John Manual's overview of the draft for Baseball America.

USA Today has a this story on back-up catchers.

George Brett has a bit of a moment on a local news station when asked about KC manager Trey Hillman

BOX SCORE

Manager Don Wakamatsu is a lot of things, thoughtful, positive and extremely honest. So tonight following the Mariners 6-5 loss to the Angels at Safeco, that honesty came out in his criticism of his starting pitcher, Felix Hernandez.

While players like Yuniesky Betancourt have drawn sharp criticism of Wakamatsu, Felix has not had such comments. Really Felix hasn't had much criticism in a while. But Wakamatsu was not impressed with Hernandez's outing of 5 2/3 innings pitched, 6 runs allowed on 11 hits.

“Our team revolves around pitching and defense and we were good at neither at the start of the game,” Wakamatsu said. “Felix wasn’t sharp. Sometimes you ask guys to step up and I don’t think he stepped up today.”

Well Felix certainly had his issues. He never made it an inning without allowing a base runner and he threw 107 pitches with 63 strikes.

However, it was Felix's inability to slow down or even seem to pay proper attention to the Angels' running game. The Angels stole five bases in eight attempts. And while Kenji Johjima isn't known to be particularly great at throwing out runners, Wakamatsu felt that Felix allowed them to good of jumps by not being quicker to the plate.

“A lot of it how hard it has to do with how hard we worked to control the running game,” Wakamatsu said. “Anaheim is a good club, but it’s an embarrassment to allow them to steal five bags off of us. If we do a better job of controlling the running game it’s a different outcome.”

Felix isn't fast to home, but he usually isn't horrible. But Wakamatsu said he was in the 1.5 to 1.6 seconds range and that is just too slow.

“It comes and goes,” Wakamatsu said of Hernandez’s times to the plate. “And that’s what we talk about showing up, especially as talented as Anaheim is.”

Felix had a different opinion of his start. When asked if he was frustrated, he responded: "I’m not frustrated, hell no,” he said. “For me it was a good performance. I made good pitches and they just hit the ball in the holes.”

So we have a differing of opinions.

When asked about the stolen bases, Felix said he tried to keep them close, and that stolen bases were part of the game and that the Angels are just good at it.

Ronny Cedeno got the start over Betancourt and delivered a two-run homer and a sac bunt that led to a run. If I had to guess, Cedeno will be starting on Wednesday night, perhaps at second base. Jose Lopez had a tough game. He went 0-for-4 at the plate, including grounding into a double play with runners on first and third and one out in the fifth inning. He also showed poor range on two of Torii Hunter's singles and booted a sure double play that cost the Mariners a run in a one run loss.

Wakamatsu mentioned both in his postgame comments.

On the booted double play ball ...

“That hurt us, and that’s the defense I’m talking about,” Wakamatsu said.

On hitting into a double play and swinging at the first pitch ...
“We could have tacked on a run and kept the game even or go ahead,” Wakamatsu said.

Wakamatsu was as frustrated as I've ever seen him, but it might not be the last time. This team has been so close in games, but silly things have cost them. And until they get cleaned up, or addressed, they will continue to haunt them in key situations.