MARINERS NOTEBOOK: McLaren has no answers for poor defense

“Our defense has been so inconsistent,” McLaren said. “And we thought that was going to be one of our strengths. It’s like a double whammy.”

It’s not like McLaren hasn’t seen his team make plays. The Mariners have two gold glove winners in Adrian Beltre and Ichiro Suzuki.

“It makes you shake your head,” McLaren said. “There is so much talent out there defensively.”

McLaren and his staff met early on Wednesday for an extensive talk about the issues.

“Hopefully, this starts taking care of itself today,” McLaren said before the game.

And it did.

Seattle came up with five great defensive plays in the game, and more importantly didn’t boot any routine plays.

“We always have confidence in the defense,” pitcher Arthur Rhodes said. “Everybody’s going to make errors, but we haven’t lost con-fidence in the defense.”

Rhodes was a direct beneficiary of a key 6-4-3 double play to escape a bases-loaded threat in the seventh inning to keep the game tied.

But that wasn’t even the biggest double play of the game. That came in the bottom of the ninth after Texas got the leadoff runner on when Jared Saltalamacchia walked. The Rangers tried to bunt him over with Chris Shelton, but first baseman Miguel Cairo charged in, grabbed the hard bunt and fired to second to get the lead runner. Yuniesky Betancourt then fired to first and the covering Jose Lopez to get Shelton by a step for a double play.

“That was a huge play,” McLaren said.

Besides the double plays, the Mariners benefitted from a sliding catch in center field by Ichiro Suzuki in the second inning and a lung-ing catch by Wladimir Balentien in right field in the eighth with two runners on. “We know we’re a good defensive team,” McLaren said.

SILVA’S BACK HURTING

For Carlos Silva to leave a game before the seventh inning, something had to be extremely wrong. Silva can’t stand leaving a game early.

But with his lower back aching with every pitch, Silva finally gave the ball up in the sixth inning after giving up a double to David Murphy and getting Brandon Boggs to pop out. He asked for the trainer and left the game after a brief meeting.

“It was hard to come out of the game, but I knew I couldn’t keep going,” Silva said. “I didn’t throw one good pitch that inning.”

Silva said his back started really hurting the inning before when he ran to cover first base on a ground ball hit to the right side of the infield.

“Oh man, then it started hurting,” he said.

Silva said he’d had back soreness since his last start. But he pitched through it, he said, because “I wanted to pick my team up and go home with something positive.”

He did that, going 6ª innings, allowing five hits and two earned runs while striking out four. Silva didn’t think he’d miss a start.

SHORT HOPS

Jeff Clement hit his first career triple in the seventh after Josh Hamilton misjudged his deep fly to center. Clement also added a dou-ble. ... Ichiro Suzuki finished 0-for-6 in the game – only second time he’s gone 0-for-6 in his career – and had his 12-game hitting streak snapped.