Oakland handcuffs Mariners on four hits

SEATTLE – Trevor Cahill and two relievers held Seattle to four hits while Josh Willingham and Scott Sizemore hit home runs in the Oakland Athletics’ 7-0 rout of the Mariners on Tuesday night.

After allowing a pair of singles in the first inning, Cahill (12-14) retired the next 13 batters. No base-runner advanced past second base. He struck out seven and walked one. Craig Breslow and Jerry Blevins each pitched a perfect inning to close out the four-hitter.

Cahill’s 40 career wins in his first three seasons are second most in Oakland history – behind Vida Blue’s 42 – for a pitcher before his 24th birthday.

Mariners starter Blake Beavan (5-6) gave up seven runs and eight hits in five innings. He walked the second batter of the game, Coco Crisp, to end his streak without issuing a walk at 24 1/3 innings. It’s the longest streak of consecutive walkless innings by a rookie starter since San Diego’s Josh Banks had a 25-inning streak in 2008. Beavan’s 1.27 walks per nine innings are third lowest all-time by a rookie pitcher.

That was the beginning of Beavan’s troubles. Crisp stole second, his 49th. That tied him with New York’s Brett Gardner for the league lead. Hideki Matsui singled to right and Willingham followed with his club-leading 29th home run, a three-run shot that caromed off the left-field, second-deck facade for a 3-0 lead.

The A’s pushed a couple of more runs across in the third. Willingham drew a one-out walk and David DeJesus singled to left. Scott Sizemore singled to right, scoring Willingham and sending DeJesus to third.

DeJesus scored on Kurt Suzuki’s sacrifice fly for a 5-0 lead.

Matsui opened the fifth with a single and eventually trotted home on Sizemore’s two-out home run, his 11th, into the left-field bullpen.

Notes

Willingham is one of 10 big-league players nominated Tuesday for the annual Hutch Award. The award, first given in 1965, is presented to the player who best exemplifies the honor, courage and dedication of player and manager Fred Hutchinson, who died of cancer at age 45. In his honor, his brother, Dr. Bill Hutchinson, founded the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. … With LH Jason Vargas nudging over the 200-inning mark (201) Monday, that gives the Mariners two 200-inning pitchers ( Felix Hernandez has 233 2/3) for the first time since 2004 with Jamie Moyer (202) and Ryan Franklin (200 1/3). … Mariners catcher Miguel Olivo will finish as the team leader in both home runs (19) and RBIs (62), the first time for a catcher in Mariners history. He also will be just the fourth catcher to do that in the expansion era, since 1961. The others were: Cleveland’s John Romano (1962), Detroit’s Lance Parrish (1983, 1984) and Cleveland’s Victor Martinez (2007).