MARINERS TAKE SHINE OFF COLON'S STAR ALL-STAR ACE ROUGHED UP FOR SEVEN RUNS IN DEFEAT SEATTLE 10, ANGELS 2.

Byline: Greg MacDonald Staff Writer

ANAHEIM - Bartolo Colon was trying to put an exclamation point on his All-Star first half Thursday.

Instead, the Angels right-hander punctuated his outing with question marks about what went wrong.

Colon surrendered a pair of two-out, three-run doubles in the first two innings and the Angels went on to lose to the Seattle Mariners 10-2 in front of 43,747 at Angel Stadium.

``Bart's stuff was very good early; he was just missing and just couldn't finish the first couple innings,'' Angels manager Mike Scioscia said. ``You have to give the other side a little bit of credit. They strung together some good at-bats with two outs. They waited for good pitches to hit, they squared them up with some guys on base and split a couple gaps.''

The Angels lost a half-game in the standings to idle Texas and now lead the Rangers by eight games.

Jeremy Reed collected the first bases-loaded double in the first inning for Seattle. After Colon (11-5) retired Ichiro Suzuki and Randy Winn with relative ease, Raul Ibanez and Richie Sexson hit back-to-back singles. Adrian Beltre then drew a full-count walk to set the stage for Reed.

Angels pitching coach Bud Black tried to calm down his pitcher with a first-inning trip to the mound.

``I told him there was a lot of game left and that we were going to score some runs for him, which we didn't,'' Black said. ``But you have to send that message on the mound.''

The message, however, was not clear.

Reed, who entered the game 2 for 2 against Colon in his young career, lined a double into the left-center field gap to give the Mariners a 3-0 lead. Willie Bloomquist followed with a double of his own to the left-center field gap to give Seattle four first-inning runs.

Colon appeared to settle down in the second inning, getting Miguel Olivo and Ichiro on groundouts to shortstop. But the 32-year-old got himself into more two-out trouble.

He issued two-out walks to Winn and Ibanez, and Sexson hit a groundball that Angels third baseman Dallas McPherson could not handle, and it went for an infield single to load the bases. Beltre, who entered the game 3 for 6 with the bases loaded this season, lined the first pitch he saw from Colon into the right-center field gap to score three runs.

``I am (upset) at myself,'' Colon said through an interpreter. ``I got into situations where I should have gotten the next guy and I didn't get the job done. It happened in the first inning and it happened in the second inning. I tried to do too much after two outs, my stuff was not the same and it hurt me.

``I got hit hard today. No excuses.''

Colon got into a groove after Beltre's three-run double. He allowed only one hit - a one-out single by Winn in the fourth - from the third inning through the sixth. But his inability to get timely third outs in the first and second innings proved to be his demise.

``He threw some sliders, but didn't have good command of his off-speed stuff,'' Scioscia said. ``He settled down and started throwing better breaking pitches and changed speeds a little bit. He seemed strong in his last couple of innings, but the damage was already done.''

The early 7-0 cushion was more than enough for Seattle starter Joel Pineiro (3-4). The Mariners right-hander pitched his second complete game of the season, allowed six hits and two runs, and improved his lifetime record against the Angels to 4-3 in 14 games.

Colon, who went six innings and allowed seven runs, fell to 7-8 in 18 career starts against the Mariners.

Darin Erstad collected the Angels' first hit in the bottom of the fourth, when he led off the inning with a double down the third-base line. He went to third on a groundout by Vladimir Guerrero and scored on a groundout by Garret Anderson.

Erstad, who had two of the Angels' six hits, singled to begin the seventh inning but was quickly erased when Guerrero grounded into his second double play of the game.

The Mariners added a run in the top of the seventh. Ibanez led off the inning with a single against Angels reliever Kevin Gregg.

After Sexson walked, Ibanez went to third as Beltre grounded into a 5-4-3 double play and then scored on Gregg's wild pitch.

Seattle added two more runs in the eighth inning on Winn's third home run of the season.

Greg MacDonald, [phone]

greg.macdonald(at)sgvn.com

CAPTION(S):

2 photos, 4 boxes

Photo:

(1 -- color) Angels ace Bartolo Colon was tagged for seven runs on seven hits in six innings against Seattle on Thursday night.

(2) Seattle's Richie Sexson slides past Angels catcher Bengie Molina to score on Adrian Beltre's double during the second inning Thursday.

Chris Carlson/Associated Press

Box:

(1) SEATTLE at ANGELS

- Greg MacDonald

(2) GAME RECAP

(3) HOW THE RUNS SCORED

(4) ALMANAC