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C6 Sports | | SUNDAY, MAY 12, 2019 2 R hits with three walks and three strikeouts. It was his worst outing since dizziness from food poisoning forced himout of the first inning of his start April 8 against the Kansas City Royals. His command was nonexistent and it made the results unsurprising. After providing some hope of an improved 2019 season with a stretch of four outings that ranged fromdecent to solid to outstanding, Hernandez has had back-to-back clunkers. Like his team, that stretch may have provided renewed and unrealistic expectations. This is who he is as a pitcher. He no longer has the stuff to dominate consis- tently. Even with the idea of pitch- ing backward and using his curve- ball as a primary weapon, he still has to locate that pitch as well as his fastball and changeups. Teams have already recognized his new plan. So it comes down to command and being able to put the ball where he wants to. He hasn’t done it the past two games and he’s gotten hit for it. “Walks, walks get me in trouble,” he said. “If I don’t get ahead of hit- ters, I get in trouble. I couldn’t throw a strike withmy curveball.” Hernandez did reach a milestone in the second inning, notching career strikeout No. 2,500. Hernan- dez is the sixth youngest pitcher to reach 2,500 strikeouts at 33 years and 33 days old. The five pitchers ahead of him are Nolan Ryan (31 years, 101 days), Walter Johnson (31 years, 197 days), PedroMarti- nez (32 years, 221 days), Tom Seaver (33 years, 287 days) and Bert Blyleven (33 years). All five of those pitchers are in the Baseball Hall of Fame. “It means a lot to be a part of the elite pitchers,” he said. “Hopefully I can play a fewmore years and get to 3,000.” Ryan Divish: 206-464-2373 or rdivish@seattletimes.com end the inning and limit the dam- age. An emotionally engaged Hernan- dez let out a scream and stalked to the visitors’ dugout in celebration. His next walk to the dugout would be a head-down trudge with the only emotion being disgust. After getting AndrewBenintendi to line out sharply to start the third inning, Hernandez wouldn’t record another out against the next six batters he faced: Mookie Betts –walk J.D. Martinez – sharp single to left Moreland – slicing single to cen- ter to load the bases Bogaerts – RBI single to left Devers – two-run single to center Chavis –walk. The 4-0 lead was gone and Her- nandez had shown no signs of exe- cuting well enough to slow down the Red Sox while throwing 40 pitches in the inning. Acta went to the bullpen, bring- ing in lefty Roenis Elias to try to keep the game competitive. Elias rewarded Acta by promptly giving up a two-run single to Bradley with both runs charged to Hernandez and then serving up a two-run hom- er to Sandy Leon with those runs going against his ERA. “We hoped Felix could keep us in the game for at least four innings,” Acta said. “We went to Elias be- cause he was well rested and the game was still there, but it got out of hand there.” The inning finally came to a close when Benintendi made his second out in the frame and rookie Shed Long, playing in his first MLB game, made a nice diving stop and throw to first to get Betts. Eleven batters came to the plate in the inning, six got hits and eight runs were scored. The 4-1 lead was now an unrecov- erable 9-4 deficit. Hernandez’s official line was 2 1 / 3 innings, seven runs allowed on six for the first time this season, Seattle dropped another game belowwith a forgettable 9-5 loss at Fenway Park. “Not the way we drew it up, pitching-wise,” said actingmanager Manny Acta. “We gave Felix a little bit of cushion and we felt like it would buy us some time. Unfortu- nately he couldn’t stop them.” To be fair, the Red Sox offense is rolling. Boston has scored 89 runs and bashed 22 homers in its past 12 games for an average of 7.4 runs per game. “They just grind out at-bats against all of our pitchers,” Acta said. “It took us 130-something pitches just to get through five in- nings.” It was the Mariners’ third straight defeat and seventh loss in nine games of the 10-game trip. There is no salvaging this mess with a win Sunday, but Marco Gonzales will try to stop the losing and return some dignity to a team that is trend- ing towardmediocrity at a rate faster than Hernandez’s waning fastball. There was a time when Hernan- dez would put a stop to Seattle’s losing streaks and poor play by tossing out a dominant start that would allow even the worst of the Mariners teams to earn a victory. He was that good. But he’s no longer that pitcher. The aura of King Felix is gone. On Saturday, he looked like an average pitcher just trying to survive against an offense he knew he couldn’t stop or even slow down. The coaching staff knew it was a possibility based on his warmups in the bullpen. “He didn’t warmup very well,” Acta said. “Our pitching coaches were worried about that. They didn’t feel like the ball was coming out hot out of his hand. We’ve seen that before in the past and the guy will come out and pitch well and vice versa where sometimes guys throw the heck out of it in the bull- pen and then get lit up.” Hernandez hoped he could find a way when he entered the game. “It was just one of those days that you don’t feel that well,” he said. His teammates gave him a nice 4-0 lead in the first inning. Daniel Vogelbach and Domingo Santana swatted back-to-back run-scoring doubles with two outs and Jay Bruce whacked his 12th homer of the season— a two-run shot to right field. Hernandez worked a 1-2-3 first inning, which had previously been a hint that he might have a produc- tive outing. And he hoped he could replicate it and get through at least five. But his lack of command be- came evident and the Red Sox went into grindmode on him. MitchMoreland led off the sec- ond inning with a solo homer. After a walk by Xander Bogaerts and a single fromRafael Devers, Hernan- dez found himself facing runners on the corners and nobody out. He responded by striking out Michael Chavis and Jackie Bradley Jr. and getting Sandy Leon to pop out to < Mariners FROM C1 For the record W-L 20-22 WPCT .476 Streak: L3 vs. AL East: 4-6 Home: 7-11 vs. AL Cent.: 7-6 Road: 13-11 vs. NL: 0-4 vs. AL West: 9-6 vs. LHP: 3-8 vs. L.A.: 5-1 vs. RHP: 17-14 vs. Oakland: 2-0 Day: 6-9 vs. Texas: 2-2 Night: 14-13 vs. Houston: 0-3 Extra innings: 3-0 NEXT F IVE | Sunday | @Boston, 10:05 a.m., ROOT | RHP Velazquez (0-2, 4.03) vs. LHP Gonzales (5-1, 3.08) Monday | vs. Oakland, 7:10 p.m., ROOT | RHP Fiers (3-3, 5.48) vs. LHP Kikuchi (2-1,3.54) Tuesday | vs. Oakland, 7:10 p.m., ROOT | LHP Anderson (4-2, 4.19) vs. RHP Leake (2-4, 4.37) Thursday | vs. Minnesota, 7:10 p.m., ROOT | RHP Pineda (2-3, 6.09) vs. RHP Swanson (1-4, 6.35) Friday | vs. Minnesota, 7:10 p.m., ROOT | LHP Perez (5-0, 2.83) vs. RHP Hernandez (1-4, 6.52) By VICTOR MATHER The New York Times The idea of the European Cup, when it was created in 1955, was to bring together soccer champi- ons from across the continent to decide which country truly had the best team. Was Real Madrid better than AC Milan? CouldManchester United beat Benfica? Could Ajax beat Juventus? Round after round, year after year, fans finally were able to see top teams battle it out in com- petitive matches with a major trophy on the line. Now called the UEFA Champi- ons League, this year’s final will once again determine the top club team in Europe. Will it be Liver- pool, fromEngland’s Premier League, or TottenhamHotspur, from, er, England’s Premier League? The match will take place in Madrid on June 1. But given the participants, it might as well be a routine November league match in London. Neither team is the reign- ing English champion, either: Spurs finished third last season, Liverpool fourth. For decades, such a matchup was impossible: one teamper country was allowed into the Euro- pean Cup, with an exceptionmade only for the defending champion. But in 1997-98, some league run- ners-up were admitted, too, and before long, three, four and some- times five teams from the biggest countries were allowed to enter. Suddenly it was possible — likely even— for a team to be champion of Europe without being the cham- pion of its domestic league. Expansion also increased the likelihood the Champions League final would be contested by two teams from the same country. It happened in 2000 (Real Madrid vs. Valencia) and five times since then. Recently, a single-country final has become something of a Champions League feature: Bay- ern played Dortmund in an all- German final in 2013, and in 2014 and 2016 the finalists came from the same city: Real Madrid and AtleticoMadrid. Some factions in Europe do not seem tomind this: A group of top clubs, led by Juventus and its pres- ident, Andrea Agnelli, is pushing to reshape the Champions League even further, to ensure that the biggest teams always have a place, that the smaller ones get pushed to the margins evenmore, and UEFA last week signaled it might be willing to go along. While officials from the conti- nent’s biggest clubs and UEFA, which governs the sport in Europe and organizes the Champions League, have suggested there is a suite of options on the table, docu- ments obtained by The New York Times outline one developed plan. If approved, it would calcify the Champions League into a competi- tion dominated by a small group of elite clubs, and leave as few as four of its 32 places available for teams from leagues in Europe’s 55 na- tional federations. The documents reviewed by The Times, the product of a project that appears to have been in the works for more than a year, present a more formidable threat to domes- tic leagues andmost clubs than previously known. After the first legs of this sea- son’s semifinals, won by Ajax of Amsterdam1-0 and Barcelona 3-0, there was hope, at last, for an underdog in the final, even if it looked set to face a Spanish giant. But then Liverpool and Spurs completed stunning comebacks in the second legs, and a final that seemed destined to be about histo- ry and style and storied teams — Barcelona has won five Champi- ons League titles and Ajax four — lost some of its magic. Soon, this season’s dominance of the Premier League could ex- tend even to UEFA’s second-tier championship, the Europa League, where Arsenal and Chelsea are on the cusp of advancing to the final. It would be the first time two Eng- lish teams have met in that final since the first season, in 1971-72. The successful year in European play for England harks back to the late ’70s and early ’80s, when English teams won six European Cups in a row. Despite titles by Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool since 2005, English teams have been known recently for losing Champions League finals (six defeats since 2006). All-England final shows how the rich get richer M I C H A E L DWY E R / T H E A S S O C I A T E D P R E S S Mariners batter Ryon Healy breaks his bat hitting into a force out during the first inning. M I C H A E L DWY E R / T H E A S S O C I A T E D P R E S S Mariners starting pitcher Felix Hernandez walks off the field after be- ing relieved during the third inning against the Red Sox. Mariners Log Saturday's box Seattle AB R H BI BBSO Avg Haniger cf 3 0 0 0 1 1 .227 Crawford ss 4 1 1 0 0 0 .375 Encarnacion 1b 4 0 0 0 0 0 .237 Vogelbach dh 4 1 1 1 0 1 .255 Santana lf 4 1 1 1 0 3 .287 Bruce rf 4 1 1 2 0 1 .192 Narvaez c 4 1 2 1 0 0 .297 Healy 3b 4 0 0 0 0 1 .236 Long 2b 3 0 0 0 1 1 .000 Totals 34 5 6 5 2 8 Boston AB R H BI BBSO Avg Benintendi lf 4 0 0 0 1 2 .284 Betts rf 4 1 1 0 1 1 .290 Martinez dh 3 1 1 0 2 1 .308 Moreland 1b 4 2 2 1 1 0 .231 Bogaerts ss 4 1 1 1 1 1 .257 Devers 3b 4 1 3 2 1 0 .326 Chavis 2b 3 1 0 0 2 1 .258 Bradley Jr. cf 4 1 1 2 1 2 .149 Leon c 3 1 1 3 1 0 .222 Totals 33 9 10 9 11 8 Seattle 400 000 001— 5 6 0 Boston 018 000 00x— 9 10 1 E— Porcello (1). LOB— Seattle 4, Boston 11. 2B— Vogelbach (7), Santana (10). HR— Bruce (12), off Porcello; Narvaez (6), off Brewer; Moreland (12), off Hernandez; Leon (1), off Elias. RBI— Vogelbach (19), Santana (36), Bruce 2 (25), Narvaez (16), Moreland (29), Bogaerts (26), Devers 2 (20), Bradley Jr. 2 (7), Leon 3 (5). SB— De- vers (5). RLISP— Seattle 1 (Crawford); Bos- ton 7 (Moreland 2, Bogaerts 2, Chavis, Bradley Jr., Leon). RISP— Seattle 2 for 3; Boston 5 for 15. GIDP— Chavis. DP— Seat- tle 1 (Long, Encarnacion). Mariners IP H RER BB SO ERA Hernandez L, 1-4 2 1 / 3 6 7 7 3 3 6.52 Elias 1 2 / 3 2 2 2 2 2 3.10 Sadzeck 1 0 0 0 3 2 2.70 Gearrin 1 0 0 0 1 0 3.86 Rosscup 1 1 0 0 2 0 2.77 Brennan 1 1 0 0 0 1 2.11 RedSox IP H RER BB SO ERA PorcelloW, 3-3 6 2 / 3 5 4 4 1 5 5.15 Workman 1 / 3 0 0 0 1 0 1.50 Brasier 1 0 0 0 0 1 3.24 Brewer 1 1 1 1 0 2 6.00 Pitches — Hernandez 68, Elias 40, Sadzeck 26, Gearrin 23, Rosscup 27, Brennan 5, Por- cello 107, Workman 9, Brasier 14, Brewer 13. Inherited runners-scored— Elias 3-3, Workman 1-0. WP— Gearrin. Umpires— Home, Adrian Johnson; First, Quinn Wol- cott; Second, Gary Cederstrom; Third, Marvin Hudson. T— 3:15. A— 36,024. How the runs scored Mariners first: Mitch Haniger strikes out swing- ing. J.P. Crawford singles to center field. Edwin Encarnacion flies out to right field to Mookie Bet- ts. Daniel Vogelbach doubles to deep right field. J.P. Crawford scores. Domingo Santana doubles to deep left center field. Daniel Vogelbach scores. Jay Bruce homers to center field. Domin- go Santana scores. Omar Narvaez singles to right center field. Ryon Healy reaches on a fielder's choice to shortstop. Omar Narvaez out at sec- ond. 4 runs, 5 hits, 0 errors, 1 left on. M's 4, Red Sox 0. Red Sox second: Mitch Moreland homers to right field. Xander Bogaerts walks. Rafael Devers sin- gles to right center field. Xander Bogaerts to third. Michael Chavis called out on strikes. Jackie Bradley Jr. strikes out swinging. Sandy Leon pops out to Ryon Healy. 1 run, 2 hits, 0 errors, 2 left on. M's 4, Red Sox 1. Red Sox third: Andrew Benintendi lines out to right center field to Jay Bruce. Mookie Betts walks. J.D. Martinez singles to left field. Mookie Betts to second. Mitch Moreland singles to left center field. J.D. Martinez to second. Mookie Bet- ts to third. Xander Bogaerts singles to shallow left field. Mitch Moreland to second. J.D. Marti- nez to third. Mookie Betts scores. Rafael Devers singles to right center field. Xander Bogaerts to third. Mitch Moreland scores. J.D. Martinez scores. With Michael Chavis batting, Rafael De- vers steals second. Michael Chavis walks. Jackie Bradley Jr. singles to center field. Michael Chavis to third. Rafael Devers scores. Xander Bogaerts scores. Sandy Leon homers to left field. Jackie Bradley Jr. scores. Michael Chavis scores. An- drew Benintendi strikes out swinging. Mookie Betts grounds out to second base, Shed Long to Edwin Encarnacion. 8 runs, 6 hits, 0 errors, 0 left on. Red Sox 9, M's 4. Mariners ninth: Jay Bruce called out on strikes. Omar Narvaez homers to center field. Ryon Healy grounds out to shortstop, Xander Bogaerts to Mitch Moreland. Shed Long strikes out swing- ing. 1 run, 1 hit, 0 errors, 0 left on. Red Sox 9, M's 5. Mariners statistics BATTERS Avg AB R H 2B HR RBI wRC+WAR Crawford .375 8 1 3 0 0 0 111 0.0 Murphy .308 39 3 12 3 2 4 145 0.5 Gordon .304 138 14 42 3 3 19 104 0.8 Narvaez .297 111 23 33 3 6 16 141 1.2 Santana .287 164 21 47 10 8 36 135 0.2 Beckham .257 140 20 36 11 7 20 119 0.5 Vogelbach .255 102 21 26 7 9 19 167 1.2 Encarnacion.237 135 28 32 2 12 27 144 1.1 Healy .236 144 22 34 16 6 24 106 0.1 Moore .229 48 7 11 3 2 5 113 0.1 Haniger .227 163 32 37 12 9 21 114 1.0 Bruce .192 125 19 24 6 12 25 109 0.5 Smith .165 97 15 16 1 1 5 44 -0.8 Bishop .100 20 1 2 0 0 2 -51 -0.3 Long .000 3 0 0 0 0 0 6 0.0 Team .245 1448 228 355 77 77 224 116 5.9 Triples: 5 (Gordon 1, Santana 1, Haniger 1, Smith 2) Stolen bases: 29 (Gordon 10, Santana 4, Beck- ham 1, Moore 2, Haniger 4, Smith 8) PITCHERS W-L ERA IP H ER BB SO FIP WAR Brennan 1-2 2.11 21.1 13 5 8 253.12 0.3 Sadzeck 0-1 2.70 16.2 10 5 8 193.84 0.2 Rosscup 2-0 2.77 13.0 11 4 14 184.58 0.0 Gonzales 5-1 3.08 52.2 53 18 13 393.42 1.2 Elias 2-0 3.10 20.1 16 7 8 202.97 0.6 Kikuchi 2-1 3.54 48.1 41 19 10 383.51 1.1 Gearrin 0-1 3.86 16.1 11 7 11 194.16 0.1 Leake 2-4 4.37 47.1 58 23 9 355.36 0.0 LeBlanc 2-0 4.50 16.0 21 8 5 124.18 0.2 Bradford 0-0 4.61 13.2 14 7 3 106.12 -0.2 Wright 0-0 5.68 6.1 6 4 3 92.17 0.1 Sheffield 0-0 6.00 3.0 2 2 4 39.45 -0.1 Swarzak 2-2 6.17 11.2 14 8 8 139.64 -0.9 Swanson 1-4 6.35 28.1 31 20 5 215.38 0.1 Hernandez 1-4 6.52 38.2 50 28 8 345.32 0.1 Strickland 0-111.57 2.1 2 3 0 37.41 -0.1 Team 20-22 4.76 374.1 390 198133 333 4.73 1.8 Saves: 12 (Sadzeck 1, Elias 4, Bradford 1, Swarzak 3, Strickland 2, Rumbelow 1) MARINERS