by Jerry Feitelberg

AP photo: On the fence Josh Reddick Oakland A’s outfielder watches a ball sail into the crowd hit by the Seattle Mariners Leonys Martin in the third inning Tuesday night

OAKLAND–The Seattle Mariners used the long ball to pound the A’s Tuesday night. The M’s beat the A’s ace, Sonny Gray to win the second game of the three-game series by a final score of 8-2. Gray went seven-plus innings but gave up two home runs while taking the loss. A’s manager Bob Melvin thought Gray had good stuff and had his pitches “down in the zone” but he could not stop the Mariners’ hitters. The Mariner starter, Hisashi Iwakuma pitched seven innings and allowed just one run and four hits in his best outing this year

The Mariners scored twice in the top of the third. With one out, Mariner catcher Steve Clevenger singled. Center fielder Leonys Martin hit his fifth home run of the season to deep right field to give the Mariners the early lead. The Mariners’ Robinson Cano led off the top of the fourth with a solo blast to that went over the 362-foot marker in left field to give the Mariners a 3-0 lead.

The A’s finally got on the board in the bottom of the sixth. Billy Burns led off with a single, stole second and scored on a Jed Lowrie single.  The A’s trailed 3-1 after six. The Mariners got the run back in the top of the seventh. Ketel Marte singled to lead off the inning. He advanced to second on a wild pitch and then to third on a fly ball to center field. Nori Aoki drove him in with an infield single.

The Mariners blew the game open in the top of the eighth. Sonny Gray was still pitching for the A’s, but Robinson Cano led off with a double. Nelson Cruz and Adam Lind singled to add another run. A’s manager Bob Melvin decided that Gray was done for the night and brought in lefty Marc Rzepczynski to face the dangerous Kyle Seager. Seager, hitting just .167 before the start of play Tuesday night, sent one of Rzepczynski’s pitches into the right-field seats for an “Earl Weaver special.” Weaver, the former manager of the Baltimore Orioles and a member of Baseball’s Hall of Fame, loved three-run homers. Seager’s blast, his fifth of the year, increased the Mariner lead to 8-1. The A’s Khris Davis hit a solo home run in the bottom of the ninth for the A’s second run of the game. For Davis, it was his sixth of the year and his third in the last two games.

Game Notes- The A’s lost their third straight game and are 3-8 in the last eleven games. Sonny Gray went seven-plus innings and allowed eleven hits, seven runs, and two home runs. His record is now 3-3 for the year. Khris Davis is batting .304 (17-for-56) with six home runs and twelve RBIs over his last fourteen games. Stephen Vogt extended his hitting streak to six games. The A’s are now 13-15 for 2016.

The Mariners improved to 15-11 with the win. The line for Seattle was eight runs on thirteen hits and no errors. Hisashi Iwakuma won his first game of the season. The Mariners hit three home runs in the contest.They had a solo job by Cano, a two-run dinger by Leonys Martin and the crusher, a three-run shot by Kyle Seager.

The A’s and Mariners conclude the three-game series Wednesday afternoon at 12:30 pm. Sean Manaea will pitch for Oakland and Seattle will send King Felix Hernandez out to handle the pitching chores. The A’s will have their work cut out for them as they will have to beat Hernandez to avoid getting swept by the M’s. That will be no easy task as Hernandez has owned them over the years.

Time of the game was two hours and thirty-eight minutes and 12,584 faithful A’s fans watched their heroes go down to defeat. The A’s game finished before the Warrior game and the people in the press box were able to watch the Dubs come back from a ten-point deficit to beat the Portland Trail Blazers.