Oakland Athletics’ Vimael Machin, right, and Seth Brown (left) celebrate their win over the Baltimore Orioles Sun Sep 4, 2022 at Camden Yards in Baltimore (AP News photo)

By Jerry Feitelberg

Seth Brown was swinging the heavy bats for the Oakland A’s (50-85) hitting two home runs and Oakland got some nifty pitching out starter Adrian Martinez and four relievers for a 5-0 win over the Baltimore Orioles (71-62) at Camden Yards in Baltimore to avoid getting swept in three games.

The Orioles who had a six consecutive game win streak going had it snapped with the loss and drop to 2.5 games behind third place Toronto for the final AL wild card spot. The O’s in order to get back in the hunt will have to do some damage on the Jays starting Monday as they open up a four game series at Camden.

In the meantime the A’s played the role of spoiler Sunday behind Martinez who pitched six innings giving up three hits, with two walks and four strikeouts. After dropping the first two games of this series to the Orioles the A’s were laser focused in trying to get into the win column.

With good pitching the A’s got runs in the top of the second and third innings to take a 3-0 lead. In the top of the second inning Sheldon Neuse hit for an RBI single and in the third catcher Shea Langeliers hit a two run RBI single.

Orioles starter Spencer Watkins surrendered another run in the top sixth and that was all for him pitching six innings, with nine hits, four earned runs one walk and no strike outs. The biggest let down for Watkins were the two home runs he coughed up to rightfielder/first baseman Brown who hit a homer in the top of the sixth and top of the eighth innings.

Martinez had set down ten Oriole hitters before giving up a walk to Jorge Mateo “Everybody’s been at that point of just pressing, and I think we’re finally starting to see the results of being together and trying to get the next guy out,” Brown said. “Somebody’s going to come up big, and it just happened to be me today.”

A’s have Monday off and they’ll host the Atlanta Braves and starter Kyle Wright (17-5, 2.85) on Tuesday night the A’s will start Cole Irvin (7-11, 3.35) a 6:40 pm PDT first pitch at the Oakland Coliseum.