M’s dominance over A’s ends at 13 straight as Seattle falls 7-5

The unwritten laws of baseball and common sense, which rarely coincide with each other, said it would happen eventually.

Statistical probability, which can’t be found on Baseball Reference or FanGraphs, would tell you it couldn’t last forever.

At some point, likely in this 2022 season, the Oakland A’s would find a way to defeat the Mariners in one of their 19 total meetings, ending Seattle’s somewhat surprising stretch of dominance. Even the Mariners players and coaches wouldn’t expect to go undefeated in a season series vs. an American League West division opponent.

That inevitability came albeit prematurely Tuesday night at TMobile Park as the Mariners lost 7-5 to the A’s.

Seattle’s 13-game win streak over the A’s that started July 21, 2021, was done.

“We’ve certainly had Oakland’s number,” manager Scott Servais said. “We’ve played very well against them and we’ve won games in a number of different ways, many times coming from behind like it looked like we’re going to do tonight.”

While baseball teams understand losses will occur over the course of a 162-game season and are conditioned to move on from defeat quickly, the nature of this most recent Mariners loss won’t soon be forgotten.

Why?

Because it’s happening with far too great of frequency this season, specifically during this current descent past mediocrity and building speed toward irrelevance.

Another ineffective performance from the struggling Mariners bullpen — specifically Drew Steckenrider and Anthony Misiewicz — took a one-run lead and winnable game in the sixth inning and turned it into defeat.

“A couple guys have been struggling in our bullpen,” Servais said. “We’re trying to get them going. I thought we were gonna find a way to take hold of it right there. And unfortunately, we didn’t, and that’s been the story of a lot of these tight games late.”

It was the sort of game the Mariners won with great frequency last season with Steckenrider and Misiewicz getting key outs. It’s the type of game the Mariners absolutely need to win moving forward if they have any sort of hope of climbing out of the basement of the division and into a race for the last wild-card spot.

“It’s really what we were so good at throughout the season last year,” Servais said. “We’re getting away from our strengths and what really got us in good positions for those guys as far as earning their stripes in the big leagues in high-leverage roles. It was being on the attack, going right after them and that’s not happening.”