Ultimately, it was just another night at the park for the Mariners, who fell to 16-27 with yet another one-run loss — Seattle is now 5-12 in one-run games this season, the worst percentage in the Major Leagues (other than the Yankees’ 1-4).

For the nuts and bolts of what happened, here’s the game story.

The storyline in the Mariner clubhouse afterward was that it came down to situational hitting. “That was the story of night,” said Mike Sweeney, saying the Mariners just needed one more hit a few times to change the game.

Of course, simply getting any hits remains a chore for a team that entered the night hitting .237, so asking it to get 3-4 in an inning remains a dicey proposition.

As for a few of the particulars of this one:

— Manager Don Wakamatsu said Ichiro’s decision to bunt with a man on second and no outs in the third was his own. “He was bunting for a base hit,” Wakamatsu said. “With (SD pitcher Clayton Richard) throwing 94-95 going away from him a little bit, he though that was the best opportunity to maybe drop a bunt down. He got underneath it a little bit.”

— He said he had no issues with the call on the 3-0 pitch to Milton Bradley in the ninth, saying he thought it was “a decent” pitch. Bradley looked perturbed at the call, then swung and missed at the next two, the key at-bat in letting Padres’ closer Heath Bell off the hook in the ninth as Seattle had runners on first and third and simply putting the ball in play there could easily have tied the game.

— Casey Kotchman went 0-4, including the last out, and is now hitting .196. Asked about Kotchman, Wakamatsu said Kotchman looks at the scoreboard and “looks at an average and is trying to get it up in one day and you see some pressing a little bit.”

— Josh Bard took the blame for the wild pitch in the sixth that allowed San Diego to score what proved to be the decisive run of the game. “That’s completely on me,” he said. “I’ve got to block that ball. Kanekoa (Texeira), we are trying to throw a slider in there and that’s on me. I’ve got to block that ball. Obviously it’s frustrating any time it gets by you and it ended up being a big run.”

— Wakamatsu said he was “impressed” with the way Ian Snell pitched, saying the only flaw was getting the pitch count up early. Snell said the HR to Matt Stairs was a curveball that stayed up.

View full post on The Seattle Times: Mariners Blog