Not much to say. Ian Snell makes his Safeco debut and the Mariners face a pretty good pitcher in James Shields. In six career starts, Shields has a 1-2 record against the M's, but he's only allowed 8 runs in 37 innings pitched for a 1.95 ERA, his lowest against any AL opponent.

First Inning
Well, don't be afraid to mix in a strike every once in a while. Snell looks a little pumped to be pitching at Safeco. He's all over the place. He walked two of the first three hitters, then gave up an RBI single and followed with a bases loaded walk. He threw 41 pitches in the first inning.

Shields was basically the opposite of Snell, economical, efficient and perfect, going 1-2-3.

Second inning
Snell seemed to have settled down for a few moments, but he walked Barlett for the second time, gave up a double to Carl Crawford, a fielder's choice to Longoria and then walked Ben Zobrist. At that point, Wakamatsu had seen enough and pulled him and went to Chris Jakubauskas. Jak came in and got a double play ball to end the inning.

Snell pitched 1 1/3 giving up three runs on two hits, while walking six and striking out one.

The Mariners cut the lead to to 3-2 as Carl Crawford misplays Adrian Beltre's fly ball to left for a double and Franklin Gutierrez rips a two-run homer - his 13th of the season. Shields then gives up back-to-back hits and throws away a pick off attempt at first to score a run. It's now 3-3.

Third inning
1-2-3 innings for each team. I didn't know if that was possible.

Fourth inning
A strong inning for Jakubauskas

Meanwhile, the bottom part of the order mixes it up for the Mariners but nothing comes of it.

Fifth inning
Well, Jak is getting jacked around a little. Evan Longoria rips a solo bomb to center and Carlos Pena goes deep with a two-run shot to right. Its now 6-3

A note from Round Rock tonight
Brandon Morrow got a no-decision in the Rainiers 7-6 win (sweeping Round Rock in 4-game series), he allowed 5 hits, 1 run, 1 walk and 8 strikeouts in 6.0 IP. He threw 90 pitches/60 strikes.

Over his last 2 starts, Morrow has 12 hits, 3 runs and struck out 13 in 13.0 innings.

But as the venerable Mike Curto pointed out before the game, Round Rock is one of the worst hitting teams in the PCL with the fewest walks - a perfect set-up for Morrow.

Sixth inning
Gutierrez with a double - that's three hits and he's a triple away from the cycle.
The Mariners push across a run as Saunders comes up with his third hit, doubling home Gutierrez. Gutz and Saunders have six of the M's eight hits.

Seventh inning
Well that was just plain ugly, Olson walks the first two hitters he faces and Sean White can't bail him out giving up three straight hits. Of the nine walks issued by Mariners pitchers, six scored.

This update will be kind of brief as I am working on my Sunday column.

1. Erik Bedard will visit Dr. Lewis Yocum on Wednesday in Los Angeles. Yocum performed the offseason shoulder on Bedard's left shoulder to remove a cyst. Yocum is going to look at the most recent set of MRIs along with the MRI taken in June to compare and see what is wrong with Bedard's shoulder.

"We'll know more after the visit," Wakamatsu said.

Yesterday, Wakamatsu mentioned some fraying in Bedard's shoulder today, so I asked him if he could be more specific where the fraying is - perhaps the labrum or rotator cuff.

"I don't know that," Wakamatsu said. "I don't what's causing the discomfort. Surgery could be a possibility on that. I don't know. That's why we're sending him down there."

2. Doug Fister is with the team and worked out before batting practice. Wakamatsu will have him in the bullpen the next couple days in case of an emergency. But Wakamatsu is leaning towards having him start on Tuesday in Jason Vargas' spot in the rotation.

"We'll probably announce tomorrow what we'll do," Wakamatsu said.

3. Carlos Silva took time from his pregame session of hitting balls with a fungo bat over the fence and threw at a distance of 100 feet. The preliminary plan is to have him throw off the mound in a bullpen session sometime during the Yankees series. Wakamatsu said if all goes well with that, Silva could pitch in a game some time before the end of the season.

4. Aardsma is available tonight. "We're on the backside of that so to speak," Wakamatsu quipped.

Rays
Jason Bartlett SS
Carl Crawford LF
Evan Longoria 3B
Ben Zobrist RF
Carlos Pena 1B
Pat Burrell DH
Willy Aybar 2B
Gregg Zaun C
BJ Upton CF
-------------
RHP James Shields

Mariners
Ichiro RF
Russell Branyan 1B
Jose Lopez 2B
Ken Griffey Jr. DH
Adrian Beltre 3B
Franklin Gutierrez CF
Jack Wilson SS
Rob Johnson C
Michael Saunders LF
-----------
RHP Ian Snell

Well, that was interesting.

If you noticed, I stopped doing game updates in the seventh inning. Why? Well, you have to start writing for the newspaper when a game was dragging like today. One thing you have to do is start writing as if the outcome has been decided and then change according to.

So I went through four leads ...
1. Felix didn't bail the Mariners out, teammates couldn't bail him out.
2. Felix couldn't bail the Mariners out like usual, but his teammates bailed him out.
3. Mariners put up valiant effort despite a less than stellar performance from Felix and lose in extra innings
4. Mariners bail Felix out a little with a furious rally and Ryan Langerhans' first career walk-off homer.

And all of that occurred in the span about 40 minutes.

The bad part is that because of the lateness of the game and our earlier deadlines, I couldn't get any player reaction for the game story in the newspaper. But I got some for the blog.

"That was a battle," Mariners manager Don Wakamatsu said. "It would be a really easy for a club - when your ace goes out there and gives up some runs to just die and fold and give up. But we just battled and battled and what a way to win a ball game."

Battled till Langerhans ended the battle.

Obviously, Langerhans was a happy guy. He got an ice cream pie to the face and a beer shower in the shower.

"It was funny I was trying to do it in the ninth and struck out," Langerhans said. "And there I was just trying to get a base hit and keep the game alive, and I hit one out."

That it came off of Howell seems pretty surprising, since lefties were just 16-for-61 against Howell with no homers this season. Langerhans had never faced Howell before. And asked Alan Cochrell for a quick scouting report. He told me, "he's got a good curveball and he likes to use it."

Langerhans fell behind 2-2, but didn't look overwhelmed.

"I was just trying to see something up and hit it back up the middle, but I was lucky enough to get a hanging breaking ball," Langerhans said.

Hanging might be an understatement, look at the pitch tracker.

So did he know it was gone?

"I was pretty sure when it came off the bat," he said. "I saw that (Gabe) Gross didn't break right away on it."

Langerhans flew around the bases. There was no milking his home run trot.

"I was ready to get home and see my teammates," he said.

Once he got there, he received the now traditional pummeling of head and body slaps from a circle of teammates. But nothing has felt better to Langerhans.

"It was great," he said. "I've gotten to be the one slapping, but I've never got to be the one being slapped."

Wakamatsu was quite pleased.

But he also delivered a bit of a reminder that Langerhans would have never gotten to the plate had Franklin Gutierrez, who already got the golden sombrero (four strikeouts in the game), not been able to coax a lead-off walk.

"He comes up there and battles Howell who is awfully tough," Wakamatsu said.

Well Gutierrez got the benefit of a few calls, as Howell got squeezed a little by home plate ump Mark Carlson.

As for Felix Hernandez, Wakamatsu thought his stuff was there - but it was almost too good - which is part of the reason he couldn't spot his two-seamer and Rob Johnson had trouble catching the ball at times.

=> Read more!