It’s impossible to build the six- and seven-game winning streaks that the Seattle Mariners crave and need desperately when they can’t put together back-to-back wins.

On a beautiful warm day that the Puget Sound area hasn’t seen this spring and an opponent with a record even worse than theirs, the Mariners seemed poised to start a good run of baseball. But much of that “good feeling” that manager John McLaren is hoping his team would build disintegrated in yet another poor outing from starter Miguel Batista in what amounted to be a 6-4 loss, tying the Mariners with the worst record in all of baseball.

“I’m just very disappointed,” McLaren said. “That’s all I can say.”

But don’t be fooled by the final score. Batista made sure that any sense of relaxation the Mariners (16-27) might have felt before the game, and coming off a win in Texas, turned into that familiar sense of dread and anxiety from almost the first pitch, giving up three

runs in the first inning and forcing his team to play from behind the rest of the way.

“Batista wasn’t real sharp there, it took him a while to get his rhythm going and his location at all,” McLaren said.

And this isn’t the first time this has happened. Batista has struggled in the first inning of the each of his last three starts, needing a combined 109 pitches to get out of them.

“I don’t know what to say, you’ll have to talk to Miggy,” McLaren said when asked about Batista’s first inning issues.

It was fair point, but unfortunately, Batista, despite best efforts from the Mariners media relations staff, left the clubhouse immediately, not sticking around.

But according to pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre, there is no simple reason or answer. Batista is plenty warm, in fact he warms up more than any other starter on the staff.

“He actually threw about 10 extra pitches more than he normally does today,” Stottlemyre said.

Perhaps Batista was trying to overcome the first inning issues. But they didn’t work.

He gave up a lead-off triple to Jody Gerut followed by an RBI single from Tadahito Iguchi, an RBI double from Brian Giles. After getting an out, he then walked a hitter and hit another to load the bases, setting up a sacrifice for Khalil Greene, leaving the Mariners down 3-0 before they’d even taken an at-bat. The lead grew to 4-0 in the second as Iguchi ripped a solo homer to right.

“Basically all we can do is talk about it, any maybe refine some of his pitches on his throw day,” Stottlemyre said. “I’ve been trying to get him to trust his stuff more early in game, I think he tries to be too fine.”

It left an offense prone to pressing, in need of pressing to get a lot of runs.

“If it’s one run, it’s simple,” said catcher Kenji Johjima. “But when it’s four runs, it puts you under pressure to score a lot of runs.”

But Batista’s teammates didn’t completely wilt under the pressure, instead scoring three runs in the bottom of the second on Johjima’s tworun homer to left and Yuniesky Betancourt’s RBI double to left.

But even though Batista settled down somewhat, the Padres (16-27) still managed to tack on runs in the third and sixth off him to pad their lead, while the Mariners could only answer with one in the third.

“We were down, we had to keep hitting,” Jose Lopez said. “That’s how the game its nine innings, 27 outs.”