The A's May Have Just Ended Seattle's Season in Brutal Fashion

The beauty of baseball is that any team can win on any given day, which makes it hard to predict a single outcome over the course of a full season. The Athletics entered this weekend's series with the same goal as every other series this month: end someone's season. On Saturday night, the Mariners' postseason hopes got a lot darker. 

On Wednesday, Seattle was 4.5 games back in the AL Wild Card race, but had the second-worst team in baseball coming to town in the A's. Yet, it has been the A's that have shown up in the first three games, taking all three, and pushing Seattle's deficit to 6.0 games entering Sunday.

Saturday's loss has to be the most demoralizing of the bunch, because they were completely shut down by Jeffrey Springs, who went seven shutout innings, giving up just two hits and two walks, striking out six. The performance dropped his ERA on the season to 6.02 after facing George Kirby, one of the Mariners' young aces.

Again, that's the beauty of baseball. 

Springs has given up 33 home runs on the year, tied for the most in all of baseball with Shota Imanaga, but he was on his game in Seattle. Entering the bottom of the eighth inning, the A's held a commanding 6-0 lead, which points to another reason this loss in particular has to be so demoralizing for Seattle.

Max Muncy homered for the second straight day to get the A's on the board in the second, while a Henry Bolte double in the third extended their lead. Muncy and Donovan Walton added RBI hits in the fourth, and Lawrence Butler put the game out of reach with a two-run homer in the eighth. 

Seattle scored a run off the A's bullpen in the eighth and ninth.

The A's are without All-Stars Nick Kurtz and Shea Langeliers, former All-Stars Brent Rooker and Jacob Wilson, their most consistent bat, Tyler Soderstrom, and rookie Joshua Kuroda-Grauer, who has shown a lot of promise. 

The Mariners were outscored by a team missing all of its core offensive pieces, even while facing one of the worst pitchers in baseball this season. While baseball is quirky and any team can win on a given day, those types of losses shouldn't happen for a serious contending team. 

The only conclusion is that the Mariners aren't serious about playing in October.