A's fall to Mariners 6-3

SEATTLE - Seattle Mariners ace Marco Gonzales has been streaky, except when it comes to the Oakland Athletics.

Gonzales threw another gem against the A’s in a 6-3 victory Saturday night for his 10th win of the season.

Gonzales worked eight innings and improved to 3-0 against his American League-West rivals with just six earned runs allowed in 21 innings with 13 strikeouts.

For the A’s, it was all very familiar.

“It seems like we’ve played that game against him where we’ve had him on the ropes early in the game and he’s limited the damage and then ends up going seven or eight innings,” Oakland manager Bob Melvin said. “It feels like we’ve played that game quite often against him.”

Gonzales reached the eighth inning for the third time, allowing five hits and striking out six to help the Mariners snap a three-game losing streak. He accomplished the feat despite throwing 28 pitches in the first inning, loading the bases on two hits and a walk to fall behind 1-0 on Ramon Laureano’s sacrifice fly. He gave up Matt Olson’s 18th home run in the third, a solo shot that made it 2-0.

“Once they got the second run, I thought, ‘OK, that’s it, and any second we’re going to go off, and we did,” Gonzales said.

As predicted, Daniel Vogelbach and Kyle Seager stepped in to erase Oakland’s lead. Vogelbach, who is headed to the ?All-Star game, hit his 21st home run of the season to shallow right field with Domingo Santana aboard to tie the game at 2. Omar Narvaez followed with a single and Seager hit his two-run homer to shallow right for a 4-2 lead.

Narvaez drew a bases-loaded walk and Seager followed with a ?bases-loaded sacrifice fly in the fifth inning to make it 6-2, ending the night for starter Chris Bassitt (5-4).

“They had a really good approach,” Bassitt said. “Just didn’t swing one time at my curveball. Cutter, fastball is what I had. It wasn’t so much about pitches. It was more so about the speed of pitches. They were just on that speed.”

Conversely, everything was working for Gonzales (10-7), who had a difficult path to 10 victories, even after he became the first pitcher to reach five wins this season with a 5-0 start. He has gone 5-7 since, but won five of his last six starts.

Gonzales settled down after his difficult opening, retiring 12 of 15 batters during one stretch.