Baltimore 3, Mariners 2: Blame the Bats, Not the Bullpen

So that happened. Felix Hernandez has another start in which he doesn't allow a run, and the Mariners lose.

The facts:
--Felix Hernandez had thrown 97 pitches and allowed four hits going into the ninth.

--All four of the hits had come against the guys he was to face in the ninth, including two lefties.

--Hernandez told Mel Stottlemyre before the ninth that he "wasn't 100 percent" (or at least that's what McLaren told the media).

--Eric O'Flaherty had thrown 29 pitches the game before.

McLaren yanked Hernandez, saying "we got the matchups we wanted" and "I don't know what else we could've done."

One thing he could've done was demanded that his hitters work the count better and get into the Oriole bullpen.

Oriole starter Jeremy Guthrie had thrown 79 pitches through four innings, but in their next three ups, the M's saw seven, six, and nine pitches, respectively. Only catcher Jamie Burke saw more than three pitches in an at bat during those innings.

Guthrie survived through the seventh inning, and the soft underbelly of incompetence that is the Orioles bullpen was never exposed. The M's could've picked up some easy runs and made any late inning comeback even more unlikely, but they never did.