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Straight A’s

• The Walkmen: During the streak, the A's have outscored the Mariners 90 to 39, out-hit them 148 to 111 and out-homered them 12 to 6. But the starkest difference has been in walks, where Oakland leads Seattle 65 to 26. That total includes games where Oakland out-walked Seattle 11-1 (Apr. 8 against Felix Hernandez), 9-2 (Aug. 5 against Joel Pineiro) and 10-1 (last night, again against Pineiro).



• Total Domination: The Mariners did not lead at any point in the first 45 innings of the streak, until scoring one run in the top of the first inning on May 18. The A's promptly scored three runs in the bottom half of the inning. The Mariners didn't lead at the end of a full inning until the eighth game of the streak, taking a 1-0 lead after the first inning on June 14 in Oakland. The A's responded in the second inning, scoring two to take the lead. All in all, of the 126 innings played during the streak, the Mariners led at the conclusion of only 8 of those innings.



• Pitching and defense: In their last 14 games, the A's have shut out the Mariners three times. The A's have shut out all other teams a combined four times.



• Rotation? More like a death spiral: Of the 14 losses, 13 were taken by the Mariners starting rotation. The A's have beaten every single Mariners starting pitcher, including Pineiro a whopping five times, accounting for nearly half of his 11 losses. Of the 97 earned runs he's given up all season, 28 have been scored by Oakland, accounting for 29% of his total in only 23.1 of his 137.2 innings (17%). Overall, Pineiro has a 10.80 ERA against Oakland, which he earned by giving up 43 hits and 13 walks in his five starts to go along with only nine strikeouts. Amazingly, his home runs allowed total is only one, which is kind of like the fantastic deck chair arrangement on the Titanic.
  
  Surprisingly, despite losing all three of his starts against Oakland, Jamie Moyer has fared the best out of the pitchers in Seattle's rotation. Here is a list of Seattle's current starters, along with their ERA splits against the A's.

  PLAYER             ERA vs. A's    ERA OVERALL
  Jamie Moyer        5.09           4.40
  Joel Pineiro       10.80          6.34
  Jarrod Washburn    6.88           4.30
  Gil Meche          5.23           4.58
  Felix Hernandez    6.00           4.50

  The only reliever to take a loss during the streak was Rafael Soriano, who gave up Nick Swisher's go-ahead two-run home run in the eighth inning on Monday.



• Picking on the Weak Kids: On the flip side, Joe Blanton has undoubtedly benefited the most from playing the Mariners. Four of his 13 wins are against the A's rivals from the north, while he has a 1.55 ERA against them in 29 innings. If you took his stats against the Mariners out of his season line, his ERA would jump from a not-too-bad 4.53 to a horrid 5.25. Still, that only makes him the worst offender:

  PLAYER             ERA vs. M's    ERA OVERALL
  Barry Zito         1.80           3.83
  Joe Blanton        1.55           4.53
  Esteban Loaiza     6.75           5.97
  Dan Haren          1.93           3.58
  Kirk Saarloos      3.38           4.77



• The Bright Side: Of course, it's not all bad. Sure, every single hitter currently on the Mariners 25-man roster is hitting worse against the A's than against other opponents, and every starting pitcher has pitched worse against the green and gold, but four relievers, J.J. Putz, Soriano, Jake Woods and Sean Green, have actually pitched better against the A's.