With ‘bad blood’ between Mariners players and Cole Irvin, A’s drop 10th straight to AL West foe

A number of factors separate the Oakland A’s from postseason bliss. One nagging one: Their inability to beat the Seattle Mariners. Their 13-4 loss on Monday night in Seattle to open up the final road trip of the season was Oakland’s 10th straight loss to the Mariners and moved their record to 4-13 against them this season.

That matches the A’s longest losing streak against a team since they lost 10 straight to the Houston Astros from July 20, 2016 to April 28, 2017.

“They’ve had their way with us, how many games in a row,” manager Bob Melvin said. “We take the field tomorrow we expect to win. It doesn’t feel good to get beat that many times by one team, but it’s the big leagues, so you have to go out there and earn it the next day.”

The A’s looked to have gained some positive momentum with a sweep of the Houston Astros to close out their home games, but this loss nearly shuts the door on the A’s postseason hopes. Of the five American League teams competing for a wild card spot — the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox and Toronto Blue Jays among them — the A’s and Mariners were the only teams playing on Monday. With the loss, the a’s fall 3.5 games back of the second wild card spot with five games left to play. The odds are slim, at best.

The Mariners have had Cole Irvin’s number all season long. Seattle posted five runs in three innings on Irvin on Monday, leaving him with an 0-5 record and 8.69 ERA against the AL West foe this year. It isn’t so much execution that’s inspired this beat-down; Irvin said he knows the Mariners are fired up to face him and angry, even, after comments he made following May loss to Seattle in which he said, in part, “A team like that shouldn’t be putting up 10 hits against me or anyone.”

Irvin had played against a handful of players on the Mariners roster back in high school, Irvin said. While he’d typically exchange a few friendly words with them, Irvin noticed they weren’t up for chatting lately.

“So I know there’s bad blood,” he said. “And I deserve it. I deserve the beating that I’ve been getting by them all season long.”

In five starts against them this season only once has Irvin gone at least five innings. This was not one of them. Though he cruised through the first two innings, history caught up to him in the third as he nursed a three-run lead earned on Seth Brown’s three-run home run in the first inning off Mariners starter Chris Flexen.

A couple of singles brought up Ty France, who doubled to score Seattle’s first run with no outs. Irivn was able to get A’s killers Mitch Haniger and Kyle Seager out, but Luis Torrens knocked a two-out, two-run single to tie the game 3-3.

Chad Pinder and Khris Davis connected for back-to-back doubles to give the A’s a one-run lead in the top of the inning, but the Mariners sure had an answer. Irvin was pulled after issuing back-to-back walks to start the fourth inning and reliever Deolis Guerra couldn’t hold them. Hits from J.P. Crawford and France scored a pair of runs, then Haniger blasted a three-run home run to give Seattle a 8-4 lead.

“They’re hungry every time they face me,” Irvin said. “They want to beat me to the ground, and they did that every time I faced them.”

Unable to close that dismal fourth inning, Guerra was pulled for James Kaprielian, now in the bullpen with Chris Bassitt’s return to the rotation, who got the final two outs of Seattle’s five-run attack. But Kaprielian was the victim of another Haniger three-run home run two innings later.

Despite getting Flexen’s pitch count up to 95 and him out of the game after the fifth inning, the A’s bats had no answers on offense against a Mariners bullpen that’s shut the door on them throughout this 10-game losing streak. This time, Casey Sadler, former A’s reliever Sean Doolittle and Yohan Ramirez held the A’s hitless through the final three innings.

“We’ve had their starters on the ropes quite a few times and haven’t been able to get too deep there as far as runs go,” Melvin said. “They shut us down in the middle innings.”

Matt Chapman recorded his 197th, 198th and 199th strikeout of the season, the 198th broke Jack Cust’s single-season 2008 record for strikeouts by an Athletic in history. His 199 strikeouts rank second to New York’s Joey Gallo (205) for most in MLB.

Injury updates: Starling Marte and Josh Harrison were left off Monday’s lineup dealing with injuries. Marte has left lat soreness and Harrison is “banged up” from the Astros series. Both are day-to-day.