Seattle Mariners starting pitcher Mike Leake throws to the Oakland Athletics during the first inning of a baseball game, Friday, Sept. 1, 2017, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

By Eric He

The Oakland A’s dropped their fourth straight game in a narrow 3-2 loss to the Seattle Mariners at Safeco Field. The A’s tried to shake M’s pitcher Mike Leake held to just two runs in what was considered  a pitching duel on Friday night. Leake came into the ball game with a season ERA 7.32 over eight starts.

Leake had command after the A’s scored twice off him early in the game the A’s opened up the contest scoring two runs with singles by Marcus Semien and Matt Joyce on a double from Jed Lowrie. After the first inning offensive bid Leake was in control shutting out the A’s over the next six innings. The A’s slide with the bat continues scoring runs in just four times in 36 innings. “We score a couple and then in the third, we get first and second with nobody out and hit into a double play,” A’s manager Bob Melvin told AP News. “Then after that, (Leake) started finding the corner a little bit more than the middle of the plate. He has a lot of movement on all his pitches and we knew that going in. We made him throw the ball over the middle of the plate in the first three innings, and then he got better after that.”

With the win the M’s gained a game on the Minnesota Twins in the AL Wild Card race cutting the lead to just 3.5 games but the M’s need to continue their winning ways if they’re going to catch the Twins by over taking other teams in the race. Leake in Friday’s contest looked like a season veteran in control and the Mariners in the thick of the race will be depending on Leake with Mariners pitcher Felix Hernandez and Jim Paxson out with injuries.

Leake said the A’s showed they were going to take care of business early and Leake had to find his control after struggling early and bared down, “They showed they were going to be pretty aggressive today,” Leake said. “So I had to make a pretty quick adjustment. I started locating my fastball. … One thing that’s been difficult for me is being able to put guys away. The fact I was able to do that tonight was nice.”

The A’s and M’s do battle in game two of this three game series at Safeco Field a 6:10PM first pitch Saturday night