Let's start with the good news...the A's actually scored five runs!* Notice the asterisk, though. We'll return to that in a moment.
He made it interesting, but J.J. Putz shut the door on the A's in the ninth by getting Frank Thomas to hit into a double play to end the game and end the A's hopes of a two-game win streak.
The A's still have not won consecutive games since July 10-11.
Gio Gonzalez delivered five innings of decent work, allowing four runs (two earned, but that's deceptive; Patterson's error didn't hurt him as much as the boxscore indicates), walking three and striking out seven.
He was in line for a win until Jerry Blevins allowed three runs in his 1.2 innings of work. Blevins hung a few pitches, didn't appear to hit his spots well and got burned.
(On a tangent, this was my first chance to see Jeff Clement hit, and he was impressive. He took two pitches from left-handers to the wall opposite field and burned the A's tonight. Beautiful swing. Not hard to envision him joining Wieters-Soto-McCann-Mauer as one of the five best hitting catchers in the game someday soon).
*About that A's offense...
Rajai Davis put the A's on the board with a patented Rajai Davis home run: the dead-pull paint-scraper just over the left-field wall.
But the truly fortuitous inning for the A's came in the top of the sixth. Frank Thomas and Zooks were beaned to lead off the inning, and Daric Barton and Pennington eventually followed with back-to-back, opposite field, check-swing, bloop RBI singles - which is about common as the five-hyphen sentence.
You could blame Blevins, and he definitely didn't pitch great. But the A's also should've done more damage to the Mariners' starter, Feierabend, who's simply not that good of a pitcher. The fact that a Rajai Davis paint-scraper was our only offense against him over five innings is not acceptable.
Two more shots against Seattle this weekend as the A's continue a grueling stretch and limp toward an off-day and expanded rosters on Sept. 1.
