Franklin Gutierrez

The San Diego Padres defeated the Seattle Mariners 4-3 Thursday afternoon in the rubber match of a three-game series. The Padres (29-36) were able to avoid a three-game sweep with the mid-day sun beaming down on the crowd of more than 25,000 at Petco Park.

The visiting Mariners (32-24) got out to an early lead when Ken Griffey Jr. jolted a ball deep to left-center field to plate Mike Carp for the 1-0 lead. Young Brandon Morrow started his second game since returning from the DL for the Mariners.

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The Mariners started off the 2009 red-hot and gave us all a glimmer of false playoff hope when they were a top the AL West at one point with a 15-10 record. We seemed to forget this was a team that was supposed to be in a full-blown rebuilding mode.