He got help on a tremendous catch in foul territory from first baseman Adam Lind and then struck out Coco Crisp to end the game. The Mariners answered in the eighth inning on Aoki’s two-out RBI single. “And then he got a fastball, and he smoked it in the gap”.
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Seattle improved to 61-54 and remains two games back for the second wild-card spot. The Athletics stopped Seattle’s seven-game winning streak at Oakland Coliseum with Friday’s 6-3 victory but was unable to collect their fifth win in six tries since getting swept at home last weekend by the Chicago Cubs.
Hisashi Iwakuma had a middling performance for Seattle, but improved to 14-7. The lefty struck out seven and walked one.
Seattle’s bullpen blitz: Seattle’s bullpen has been at the center of its recent surge, allowing just one earned run over its last 27 1/3 innings, and it was electric again Saturday night.
Drew Storen, Archimedes Caminero and Nick Vincent closed out the Mariners’ 10th victory in 12 games.
“Wade threw well”, Servais said. “It was obviously the story of the game”. They were very good and they needed to be. It was a battle for him all evening.
Bullpen report: Coulombe went 2 2/3 innings in relief of Neal, giving up the big three-run hit to Seager, and Chris Smith handled a scoreless top of the ninth. The spasms were bad enough that he scrapped much of his day-before-start regimen to get treatment.
“A lot of guys chipped in, contributed”, Servais said.
Iwakuma got treatment before the game, and though he didn’t feel 100 percent, he still managed to give the Mariners a chance to win. He made his seventh start and eighth appearance for the Mariners since being acquired in a trade on June 22 from the Toronto Blue Jays, who had him pitching for Triple-A Buffalo. “I think most importantly I’m healthy and helping the team”.
According to oddsmakers from online sports book Bovada.lv, the Mariners are -115 money line favorites over the A’s, who have odds of -105 to win today at home.
The Mariners took the lead for good in the fifth inning, breaking a 1-1 tie.
Seager drove in four runs with his two doubles and took over the club lead in RBIs with 77. The lead was extended in one quick, smooth, vicious swing from Robinson Cano.
“I was OK to go today, but as the game progressed I started to feel stiffness”, Iwakuma said through an interpreter. But you are in Oakland. Lind went 2-for-2 with two home runs on May 25 off Neal. It was Cano’s fourth home run of the season against Oakland and 16th of his career. But Oakland’s offense, resurgent as it has been in the last few days, left men at third base in the first, second, fourth and seventh innings, hardly the recipe for success.
“It’s your job as a hitter to be ready for that pitch”, he said.
“It’s nice to build a little bit of a lead there and really let our pitchers settle in and not throw quite as many stressful pitches”, Seager said.
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With Kendall Graveman as the seasoned, consistent veteran of the starting pitching staff now, and Nelson Cruz as the large, foreboding strongman of the Mariners’ offense, the start of the fourth inning was the equivalent of Darth Vader evaporating Obi Wan Kenobi. Nelson Cruz jumped on the first pitch of the inning, drilling a homer over the wall in right-center. Cruz’s 29th homer of the year tied the score at 1-1.
