TORONTO — Smiling wide after his first major-league win, Erasmo Ramirez was on a mission to track down a memento from his milestone moment.
Kyle Seager homered, doubled, and singled, Ramirez pitched seven sharp innings, and the Seattle Mariners beat the Toronto Blue Jays 4-3 on Tuesday night.
“Erasmo pitched a fantastic ballgame,” Mariners manager Eric Wedge said. “He did a great job with his fastball, mixed in his changeup as the game wore on and had a good breaking ball.”
Starting for the first time since June 30, Ramirez (1-2) allowed two runs and six hits, setting down nine straight at one stretch. He walked one and struck out six.
“I was so happy with the last out, the 27th,” Ramirez said. “I was waiting for that since I got here.”
Ramirez, however, was still waiting for one more thing: an important keepsake.
“I went looking for the lineup,” he said. “I don’t know where it is, but I’m going to find it.”
Four relievers combined to work the eighth, and Tom Wilhelmsen closed it for his 25th save in 28 chances as Seattle snapped a three-game losing streak.
Seager went 3 for 5. He had a run-scoring single in the first, doubled and scored in the third, and homered in the fifth, his 18th.
The victory was Seattle’s 68th, one more than they had last season. The Mariners finished with 14 hits, five for extra bases.
“We swung the bats really well,” Wedge said. “I would like to have seen us put a few more tallies up there, but that doesn’t take away from the way we swung the bats. We had a lot of hits and a lot of hard outs.”
Most of the damage came off Toronto’s Brandon Morrow (8-6), who matched a career high by allowing 11 hits as the Blue Jays failed to extend their winning streak to five games.
Morrow came in 3-0 with a 1.89 ERA in three career starts against the team that drafted him, but was in trouble from the start, giving up two runs and four hits in a shaky first inning. Seager singled home the first run and, two batters later, Michael Saunders made it 2-0 with a hit to left. John Jaso tried to score from second on the play, but was thrown out at the plate by Rajai Davis.
“We were ready for the fastball,” Gutierrez said of Seattle’s approach to Morrow. “He’s a power pitcher and obviously we need to get on the fastball first and that’s what we did.”
Morrow conceded that that Mariners had feasted on his fastball.
