Yanks' bats disastrous for M's

When the highlight of your game is a foul ball, you're talking disaster.

When the ball is coming off opponents' bats like a Titleist, you're talking disaster.

When you're behind 10-0 in the fourth, it's beyond talk. It's a disaster.

If this weekend is supposed to give the Mariners, with their rosterful of newbies, an idea where they stand by truly big-league standards, they got an 11-3 reality lesson from the New York Yankees last night.

"It's not the way we'd like to have started a series against the Yankees," Mariners manager Bob Melvin said. "You don't like to get whacked around."

Treble that for Mariners starter Ron Villone, who was fatalistic about his fate.

"When I tried to challenge them, make a good pitch, they laid off it. They're good hitters over there," said the left-hander, who was bruised for 10 hits and eight runs. "I was having trouble. My stuff was flat and I couldn't hit a corner inside or out, and they knew it, and as soon as I threw the ball over the plate, they croaked it."

The New York hitters sent the ball screaming all over Safeco Field. Three times for home runs, by Bernie Williams, Ruben Sierra and Jorge Posada, and seven times for extra-base hits in the first four innings.

Overall, Villone, who started behind too many hitters, had better control than usual.

"I knew that, but I just didn't want to be putting guys on base, so I went after them to see what happens," he said. "I guess they liked what they saw. They hit me hard. I don't like having my neck snapped that many times."

Not that there weren't bright spots, such as George W. Bush's new friend, Edgar Martinez, getting two singles and Miguel Olivo hitting a homer.

But they paled in comparison to what the Yankees got from a certain former Seattle player. Not Alex Rodriguez, who was ill. Not John Olerud, who didn't start, either.

Sierra, who spent the 2002 season here, helped do the Mariners in with five runs batted in, most of them on his eighth career grand slam. That came in a six-run fourth inning, when New York put the game away.

"These guys don't do that every night, but they do it a lot," Olerud said of his new teammates. "They can play. They play every game hard and most games hit that hard, too."

The only memorable Mariners moment was the effort Ichiro put into the pursuit of Posada's long foul fly in the fourth.

Talk about Olympic sports. The right fielder nearly created his own version of the decathlon, performing a catch, dash, high jump and balance beam.

He wound up standing atop the low wall, timing his ability to stay there with the need to stay long enough to make a play and ultimately failed. As he fell back toward the field, the ball ticked off his glove, as fans fought for a souvenir rather than make away for an out their team badly needed.

"It hit my glove," Ichiro said. "I've never had a play like that before, a ball hit so I could try that. But I couldn't stay up there well enough to make the play, or long enough."

The Mariners could mount little offense against Yankees pitcher Jon Lieber, while a New York team without Jason Giambi (benign tumor) and Rodriguez scored at will.

Hideki Matsui led off the second inning with a walk that was close to being a third strike. Then Sierra smashed a double into the left-center gap to make it 1-0.

Villone quickly hit a jam in the third. Derek Jeter shot a single up the middle, and Gary Sheffield cudgeled a ball to left that might be still going except for the top-hand swing.

Third-base coach Luis Sojo tried to wave Jeter home, but the veteran infielder pulled up at third as if he knew he would score anyway — and he was right.

Villone got ahead of Williams 1-2 but hung a fastball that the outfielder hit into the Seattle bullpen for his 15th homer and a 4-0 lead.

Enrique Wilson opened the fourth with a double, and Miguel Cairo, a Mariner for a minute back in 1995, tripled to right-center to make it 5-0, then scored when Bret Boone's throw hit him for an error.

Scott Atchison relieved and fanned Posada, but he gave up an infield hit to Matsui that loaded the bases. The rookie right-hander got ahead of Sierra 1-2 but Atchison missed his spot up and in with a high fastball over the plate. Sierra crushed it out to right for New York's eighth slam of the season, 10-0.

Bob Finnigan: 206-464-8276 or bfinnigan@seattletimes.com