SEATTLE -- Something was wrong, and it troubled Jason Varitek.
No, it wasn't Manny Ramirez's base-running blunder that cost Varitek an RBI and the Red Sox their best chance to score against one of their toughest opposing pitchers of the season.
It was Varitek's own pitcher, Derek Lowe. By the time Varitek finished warming up Lowe in the bullpen before yesterday's game, the catcher wondered how the Sox would survive against Ichiro, the Hit Machine, and his free-swinging Mariners.
"It was awful," Lowe said of his tuneup. "Jason gave [bullpen catcher] Dana [Levangie] a couple of looks like, `What are we going to have to work with?' "
In one of the wonders of baseball, Lowe went from ragged in the pen to rugged on the mound as he submitted one of his finest performances of the season and gave the Sox a sweet opportunity to dump the Mariners and soar home from their seven-game western swing on wings of joy.
But Ramirez's gaffe and an outstanding effort by Seattle starter Gil Meche allowed Raul Ibanez to make all the difference by slugging Lowe's only bad pitch of the game for a two-run homer as the Mariners stung the Sox, 2-0, before 43,742 at Safeco Field.
The defeat dropped the Sox 3 1/2 games behind the division-leading Yankees and cost them a game in the wild-card standings as the Angels climbed back within five. Though the Sox went 5-2 on their seven-game swing through Oakland and Seattle, they fell one game off the pace in the American League East while gaining 1 1/2 games in the wild-card race.
"I just don't think we can be discouraged right now," manager Terry Francona said as the Sox prepared to play their final 20 games, including six against the Yankees, their rivals in the AL East. "We're doing too many good things."
Good things like pitching well. A day after Bronson Arroyo and the bullpen combined to shut out the Mariners, Lowe surrendered only two runs on five hits and a walk over seven innings as he improved his ERA to 4.91, his lowest since May 14 and a far cry from the 6.84 ERA that burdened him July 4.
No one was more pleasantly surprised by Lowe's latest act of redemption than Varitek. Lowe allowed only four balls out of the infield: two ground-ball singles, a routine fly out, and Ibanez's difference-maker.
"I know he wasn't feeling his best when he left that bullpen," Varitek said. "He really had to grind it out, and it was an excellent job, a really gutty performance."
It might not have gone to waste had Ramirez reacted differently when Varitek lined to Ichiro in right field with one out in the first inning. Johnny Damon had beaten out a grounder to third leading off and scrambled to third when Ramirez capped an admirable, 10-pitch at-bat against Meche by rifling a double to the right-field corner.
