A’s swept by Seattle in finale 3-2

Oakland lost yet again tonight as the A’s dropped the series and road trip finale tonight in Seattle as they fell late 3-2. They went winless on this road trip.

The A’s got right to scoring today. Ryan Noda doubled for the first hit of the game, setting up Seth Brown to put the A’s on the board with a big blast:

And then Seattle got one of those runs right back in the bottom half when Ty France swatted a solo shot to cut the A’s lead in half. It could have gotten worse from there were it not for the cannon attached to JJ Bleday’s arm in left field:

And then it was quiet for a while. Sears and Seattle starter Logan Gilbert traded zeros for the next four innings. Sears had his third straight solid start for the A’s while allowing just the solo home run to really damage him.

-JP Sears: 5 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 0 BB, 1 K, 59 pitches

One of the better starts from Sears tonight this season. The lack of strikeouts isn’t great but zero walks makes up for it. One might have thought that Mark Kotsay pulled him too early since he was only at 59 pitches when he was pulled. Kotsay clearly didn’t want to have Sears pitch a third time through the Mariners’ order and decided to bring in Trevor May to start the sixth.

And it immediately backfired. Leading off the bottom of the sixth, France came up and hit his second solo home run of the game to tie it up. Sears wouldn’t be getting his first win of the season quite yet.

May came back after that home run and retired the next six batters in a row. Oh, and he had a little help from Nick Allen:

All the while the Oakland bats couldn’t do much after that first inning blast. They managed just one more baserunner the rest of the night as Gilbert shook off the Brownie bomb and had one of the best starts to his young career.

After May’s two innings came lefty Richard Lovelady who walked a runner and got two outs. Rookie Garrett Acton was next and a double and intentional walk loaded the bases for Seattle. Oakland was playing with fire late.

They ended up getting burned as Acton walked the first unintentional batter of the game to bring in the go-ahead run for Seattle in the eighth inning. It felt right then and there that the game was lost.

Based on how the offense had done up to that point you would have been forgiven for thinking it was just about over. Seattle finally ended Gilbert’s day and brought in closer Paul Seward and all he did was have a perfect 1-2-3 ninth with a pair of strikeouts. And that was it.

So the losing streak has now hit 8 straight. They went completely winless on this two-city road trip and limp home to start a weekend series against a surging Houston Astros team. Oh brother.

The scheduled matchup looks like it’ll be James Kaprielian against Houston ace Framber Valdez. Valdez just tossed a complete game shutout against the A’s in his last start so it can’t get much worse than that. And don’t be surprised if we see a late decision to have an opener before Kaprielian takes the mound. Weekend baseball at the Coliseum is always fun anyway, right?