A’s get swept by the Mariners, with few high points in gloomy home series
All it took was an infield single that deflected off Nick Kurtz’s glove and a throwing error from second baseman Jeff McNeil to prepare the wheels to fall off for the Athletics and starter Jeffrey Springs on Wednesday.
Five batters into an early afternoon game at Sutter Health Park, Seattle Mariners left fielder Rob Refsnyder made the A’s pay for their defensive mistakes, hitting a three-run home run to left field in a full count for an early 3-0 lead.
Like the uncharacteristically cool weather in West Sacramento for late May, the A’s offense continued its recent gloomy stretch of hitting, mustering a few middle-inning scoring opportunities but failing to get a clutch hit en route to a 9-1 loss.
A’s swept for first time since March
The loss capped off an especially tough three-game series against the A’s divisional rivals, which saw the A’s (27-29) lose their hold of the American League West division lead to the Mariners. The A’s were swept for the first time since the first series of the season in late March, against the defending American League champion Blue Jays in Toronto.
“Today’s game summed up the series, really,” A’s manager Mark Kotsay said postgame. “If you give away free runs to a good team, that has a good pitching staff, that makes it really hard to win games.”
The series also saw the end of Nick Kurtz’s historic 48-game on-base streak, tied for the franchise’s longest single season run, end. In the series, Kurtz went an uncharacteristic 0-for-11 with a walk, playing a role in the team’s offensive slump.
Three A’s reached base twice Wednesday: left fielder Tyler Soderstrom, who doubled off the left-field wall and walked to aid two almost-rallies; and right fielder Carlos Cortes and shortstop Darell Hernaiz. The team’s lone score came in the bottom of the ninth inning after McNeil grounded into a double play, which scored catcher Jonah Heim.
Kotsay said a recent shortage of home runs — the A’s hit two home runs, both solo shots, in the Mariners series and none Wednesday — has impacted the team’s ability to score, especially if the team isn’t able to convert runs in two-out opportunities with runners on base. The A’s have scored three runs or fewer in seven consecutive games and are 2-5 in that stretch.
“We’re not getting big hits,” Kotsay said. “So, offensively we know what we need to work on.”
With the sweep, the 28-29 Mariners assumed first place in the wide-open division, which at times over the past few weeks has seen all five of its teams under .500. Four of its five teams — all but the Los Angeles Angels — were within four games of first as of Wednesday afternoon. The A’s took the sole division lead April 16 for the first time since mid-2021.
While the team’s recent stretch hasn’t been nearly as bad as a 21-game span last season that saw the A’s lose 20 games to all but fall out of playoff contention, their 10-15 record thus far in May is not the stretch the team was looking for when hoping to qualify for its first full-season playoff appearance since 2019 (the A’s made the postseason in the COVID-shortened 2020 campaign).
The team hasn’t won a series against an above .500 team since they took two-of-three from the New York Yankees during the first full week of May. The A’s two series wins in May came against the Angels, one of the worst teams in the MLB, and the 25-30 Baltimore Orioles.
Springs fans 7, despite earning another loss
Despite leaving his start with yet another loss, Springs performed mostly well, with defensive miscues and two big hits resulting in the five runs, but just two of them earned runs, during his five innings of work.
“He threw the ball better than what the line looked like,” Kotsay said.
While the 2-6 lefty starter hasn’t earned a win since his fourth start of the year on April 14 — back when his season ERA was almost three points lower, at 1.46 — Springs has consistently kept the A’s in games, only giving up more than four earned runs once all season. However, he has been left with six losses and two no-decisions in his last eight starts.
Springs’ only earned runs came after a ground ball got through the right side of the infield for a single, followed by a walk and a bases-clearing triple from Mariners third baseman Colt Emerson, who had two hits Wednesday. However, after the game, Springs said he was disappointed in his performance.
“My job is to kind of salvage the series and stop the bleeding a little bit. And I don’t feel like I did a very good job of that from the get go,” Springs said. “I like where my stuff’s at, it just comes down to executing and sequencing.”
In his five innings of work, Springs fanned seven Mariners, tied for a season high, while only giving one free pass. After giving up the home run to Refsnyder, Springs struck out five of the next seven batters he faced, including Rodriguez, Emerson and three-hole designated hitter Randy Arozarena.
“I was just making better pitches,” Springs said, saying the 3-2 changeup in the middle of the zone that Refsnyder hit for a home run was a costly mistake.
A’s struggle to hit Gilbert
On the other side, Mariners starter Logan Gilbert dominated the A’s for most of his six frames of work, fanning five and allowing seven baserunners but working out of multiple jams to hold the home team scoreless.
The Mariners bullpen held the A’s to just one hit in the seventh and eighth frames, though a single from center fielder Henry Bolte in the ninth set the home team up for a garbage-time score.
All three A’s relievers — Joel Kuhnel, Luis Medina and Jose Suarez — surrendered at least one hit, though a three-run, two-out bomb off the bat of Mariners center fielder Julio Rodriguez off Medina did the most damage as the game fell out of hand.
Though Kuhnel’s run was earned, it came directly off a throwing error from Hernaiz.
After a day off for the A’s on Thursday, he Yankees will come to West Sacramento for the first time in 2026, playing at Sutter Health Park for a three-game series Friday through Sunday.
First pitch for Friday’s game is slated for 6:40 p.m.
