NEW YORK – Jesus Montero ran through a stop sign and was thrown out at the plate. Second baseman Kyle Seager stayed back on a bouncer and played it into an RBI single. First baseman Dustin Ackley let a grounder skip through his legs for another run.
That all happened in the first two innings, and those were only part of the problems for the Seattle Mariners.
Sloppy in several ways, Seattle lost to the New York Yankees 6-2 Sunday. A pair of ex-Mariners led the way — Freddy Garcia posted his 150th career win and Raul Ibanez homered and drove in three runs on a sticky afternoon.
"We kind of labored through that game there," Mariners manager Eric Wedge said.
Montero hit a pair of RBI singles for the short-handed Mariners, who had won eight of nine. Shortstop Brendan Ryan was out a day after being hit by a pitch on the left elbow. Outfielder Mike Carp singled home the game's only run Saturday, then went to California after the game for the birth of his daughter.
Montero put the Mariners ahead with a single in the first. With two outs, he tried to score from second on Seager's single, ran past third base coach Jeff Datz's hold signal and was nailed by right fielder Nick Swisher.
"I didn't see him," Montero said.
The Yankees won for only the sixth time in 16 games. They went 4-5 against Boston, Baltimore and Seattle on their longest homestand so far this season.
Garcia (5-5) hung around for five innings and preserved a one-run lead with his final pitch, retiring Seager with two runners on base.
A two-time All-Star with the Mariners a decade ago, the 35-year-old Garcia ended a string of three straight losing starts and improved to 150-100.
"He moves the ball in and out and he's got that splitty and big curveball, slider. He's got a bunch of pitches," said Michael Saunders, who doubled and scored for Seattle.
Boone Logan, David Robertson and Rafael Soriano combined for four innings of hitless relief.
Ibanez hit his 15th homer in the fifth, a solo drive off Hisashi Iwakuma (2-3) that put the Yankees ahead 4-2. Ibanez delivered again in the sixth with a two-out, two-run single off Oliver Perez with the bases loaded.
Ichiro Suzuki continued to be a one-hit wonder for the Yankees.
Suzuki extended his hitting streak to 12 games, all since being traded from Seattle to New York, when his routine fly got lost in the sun and fell for a seventh-inning double. He has gotten exactly one hit in each of those 12 games — Willy Aybar was the last big leaguer with such an odd streak, getting a single hit in 13 straight for the Dodgers in 2006, STATS LLC said.
Suzuki said he was getting more comfortable with his surroundings. That includes dealing with a tough glare in the outfield, and he looked into the sun for a stumbling catch.
"If it was getting harder and harder every day, I'm not worthy of wearing the Yankee uniform," he said through a translator.
A day after Felix Hernandez pitched Seattle to a 1-0 win in 2½ hours, the teams slowed down in the heat and humidity.
The Mariners are the top-fielding team in the majors, though it hardly looked that way in the early innings.
In the first, Saunders made an ill-advised throw, third baseman Chone Figgins had a ball pop out of his glove and Seager wasn't aggressive enough on Mark Teixeira's grounder and turned it into a hit.
The next inning, Ackley let Curtis Granderson's hard grounder get through his legs for a two-out error that put the Yankees ahead to stay. Ackley usually starts at second for Seattle.
"Just with the pace of the game and both defenses were on their feet for quite a while," Wedge said.
"These guys have been really good defensively. It was just one of those days where there were a couple of play that we didn't make," he said. "We had the sun ball. But we didn't have Carp and Ryan in there, either. We had some guys that were playing positions they hadn't played a great deal."
NOTES: Carp is expected to rejoin the team Monday night in Baltimore. Wedge said Ryan's injury is day-to-day. ... Iwakuma has given up exactly one home run in his last nine outings.
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