The Mariners lost consecutive games for the first time this season, and fell to 6-5 after losing 3-0 to Oakland Sunday afternoon.
Seattle got a solid performance out of Chris Young, who threw six shutout innings in his first start of the year, but Mariners hitters got very little done against A’s starter Scott Kazmir and the Oakland bullpen, managing just three hits.
Mariners manager Lloyd McClendon said of the game, “I know our guys are a little disappointed, but I said this all along, winning games at this level is tough, and when you run into a buzz saw—Kazmir’s been on fire, and he chewed us up pretty good today, but we’ll bounce back, we’ll be fine.”
Asked if he was concerned about the offense, McClendon said, “I was today. When I wake up tomorrow, I’ll be just fine. Listen, when you get two or three hits, nobody looks good, and everybody is talking about the offense. But a couple of days ago, we were just fine. This is the big leagues, and a guy threw a gem against us today. We’ll bounce back and we’ll be fine.”
On Kazmir, who struck out nine in six innings, McClendon said, “Not a lot you can do when a guy’s got command of all his pitches. He was 94, 95, he’s commanding the breaking ball, he’s commanding the cutter, and his changeup was exceptional. You just go up and you battle and try to work your way through it, and today it just didn’t work out for us.”
McClendon was pleased with what he saw from Young, and when asked if he got what he was looking for from the righty, he answered, “Probably more. I was really, really pleased with his outing. He fatigued a little bit at the end, but he was great for us.”
Robinson Cano, who had two of Seattle’s three hits Sunday, said of Kazmir, “He was locating everything right where he wanted. He was making guys chase his changeup and slider, and he was throwing the heater 95.”
Asked if he had any concerns about the offense, Cano said, “No, no, no. It’s 162 games, we’ve played what, 11 games, and we won six games. You don’t want to look for anything negative right now trying to figure it out, you’ve just got to turn the page and be ready for tomorrow. You see the games we lost, it was by one or two runs. That’s why it’s good to start winning games, now we lose a series at home, we go away and face Texas and see what can happen.”
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