Defining game? Mariners playoff hopes dim as ever after A’s run away late

It’s typically disingenuous to say any one day defines a season, particularly when that season lasts for 162 games.

And maybe Sunday won’t define the Seattle Mariners’ 2018. After all, they aren’t mathematically eliminated from playing in their first MLB playoff game since the 2001 season just yet.

They just, no other way to put it, needed to win this four-game series against the Oakland Athletics, the club directly in front of them, towering in their way of ending the longest active playoff drought in North American professional sports.

The Mariners were on the cusp of their third win in four games on Sunday, with Felix Hernandez rolling through five innings, until the A’s used a sadistic sixth inning to pull away.

By the time Stephen Piscotty hit his second home run, an exclamation-point, three-run shot against new Mariner Justin Grimm in the eighth, it was about as grim as could be for the Mariners’ postseason hopes.

Seattle’s 8-2 loss in Oakland means the Mariners are right where they were four days ago, 5½ games back of the A’s for the American League’s final wild card, only now there’s 25 games remaining and only three more of them against the Athletics.

“Disappointing way to finish the series after a big win last night,” Mariners manager Scott Servais told reporters afterward. “Obviously a big swing game today with where we’re at in the standings if you can pull this one out. We didn’t get enough offensively to make that happen.”

The Mariners (76-61) are still 15 games over .500, but Oakland (82-56) just hasn’t slowed down . The A’s were 34-36 on June 15 (the Mariners were leading them by 11 games in the American League West), and they are 48-20 since then, which is the best record in baseball over that span.

“We have some baseball to play, but we got an uphill climb ahead of us,” Servais said. “And we got to go home and take care of business there. We have to rattle off a good string of wins. You got to win five or six in a row and see what happens from there.

“Still plenty of baseball to play, but it’s got to happen for us real quick. We have to have a really good homestand.”

The biggest problem with the A’s four-run sixth inning to run Hernandez was it meant facing the guillotine that’s been the back end of this A’s bullpen.

The Mariners left two on against Lou Trivino, but picked up one run against former Mariners closer Fernando Rodney on Ryon Healy’s RBI single.

That set up two on and Kyle Seager was the tying run at the plate, who started a game batting seventh in the order for the second time this season after he hadn’t done that since 2014.

Seager doubled the previous inning, and A’s manager Bob Melvin, the former Mariners’ manager, wasn’t taking any chances. He brought in electric closer Blake Treinen for a four-out save.

Seager hit a softy fly ball to left field on the first pitch he saw.

Then Piscotty followed with his second homer of the day when Grimm entered to make his Mariners debut, just after James Pazos left two on base.

“We left some late traffic against Trivino and Rodney, just unable to cash in,” Servais said. “We needed a big double or homer with guys on base and just weren’t able to get it.

“But, for me, when Felix is throwing the ball well you got to take advantage of that and you got to strike early in the ball game and we weren’t able to do it.

Hernandez was back in his happy place. Of any team he’s faced in his 14 seasons in the big leagues, Hernandez has mostly owned the Oakland Athletics (2.71 career ERA). Even his last outing here, his first career appearance out of the bullpen, he returned to form.

Hernandez needed his A-game (A’s-game?) again.

The Mariners got it through five innings. Even that pesky first inning that’s haunted Hernandez all season he cruised through it 1-2-3 with a strikeout (he entered having allowed 24 runs in the first inning over 25 starts).

The A’s didn’t score until two outs in the fifth inning when Hernandez sat a 91-mph sinker in the bottom inside corner of the zone and Piscotty yanked it just over the left-field wall for a solo home run, tying the game.

“I feel really good,” Hernandez said. “It was one mistake on the homer, but just attack hitters and that’s what I was doing in the first five innings.”

Things escalated in the sixth inning – quickly.

First a Hernandez curveball down the middle of the plate – single for Chad Pinder. Then a wild pitch moved Pinder to second base before Hernandez walked pinch-hitter Matt Joyce.

A mound visit from pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre Jr. preceded another wild pitch, moving the runners to third and second with Marcus Semien trying to bunt. That allowed him to swing away and he lined a single off of diving Kyle Seager’s glove into left field for a go-ahead, two-run single.

A’s took a 3-1 lead and Oakland had yet to run into an out.

But that ended Hernandez’s day. He had allowed one run, two hits and one walk entering the sixth inning but his final line showed four runs, four hits, two walks with three strikeouts, but now it’s almost imminent he’ll end this season still waiting to participate in his first playoff game of his career.

The Mariners used four pitchers, three relievers, in the sixth inning to finally get out of it, but not before the A’s had led with a 5-1 lead. Matt Chapman and Jed Lowrie followed with back-to-back singles off of Nick Vincent for another Oakland run and Piscotty had a sacrifice fly off of Shawn Armstrong after Zach Duke walked the lone lefty he faced to load the bases.

Then it was Mariners offense vs. dominant A’s bullpen the rest of the way.

Mitch Haniger led off the game with a double to left field and that pushed his streak to 14 consecutive games with a hit, the longest streak of his career and the longest active streak in the major leagues.

Two quick outs later and it was up to Nelson Cruz and the Mariners caught a break. His single up the middle looked like it was going to be snared by diving Lowrie, but the ball careened off of the base and over Lowrie into center field to score Haniger.

The Mariners didn’t catch many breaks after that.

They’ll need many in these final 25 games of the regular season.

This story was originally published September 2, 2018 at 4:01 PM.