"The Mariners have so much camaraderie, they're even slumping as a team.

As Jack Wilson said Monday, after yet another acquiescent trip through nine innings by Seattle's slumbering lumber, "We have one guy swinging a hot bat, and that's it. It's tough to win ballgames like that."

The one guy is Franklin Gutierrez, and he managed one of their two hits, a double, against Oakland. Jose Lopez had a single, though the Mariners didn't do anything so audacious as to bunch their hits in the same inning.

Other than those two lonely connections, it was thundering silence against Justin Duchscherer.

The M's are still preaching that it's early, and it is. But to paraphrase Yogi Berra, whose bat they could use, never mind that he's 84 years old, it can get late early when you're in a wide-open division like the American League West. Or any division, for that matter.

The averages up and down the Seattle batting order tell the story, with Gutierrez's standing out like one of those Sesame Street, "One of these things is not like the others" routines: .250, .207, .419, .188, .211, .045, .200, .182, .240.

Throw out Gutierrez — and Mariners manager Don Wakamatsu will take out a restraining order on you if you try — and they're hitting a cumulative .184.

Much of the early focus has been on Milton Bradley's struggles — he's the .045, by virtue of one hit in 22 at-bats — yet his offensive misery has plenty of company. However, as long as Bradley keeps drawing attention to himself, as he did in Texas by making an obscene gesture toward heckling fans that was captured by a camera crew, he'll continue to draw disproportionate scrutiny.

Wakamatsu said that he had a long talk with Bradley after the Texas incident. They were said to be having another discussion on Monday night, long after the media had been ushered out. He believes Bradley is putting undue pressure on himself, like many people on the club, and needs to relax."