A’s edge Mariners on sacrifice fly

OAKLAND, Calif. – Bobby Crosby’s sacrifice fly with one out in the ninth scored pinch-runner Esteban German with the winning run in the Oakland Athletics’ 6-5 victory over the Seattle Mariners on Monday night.

The A’s maintained a one-game lead in the A.L. West over second-place Anaheim, which won 5-3 at Texas.

Oakland held Ichiro Suzuki to one hit. He has 252, five shy of tying George Sisler’s 84-year-old record of 257. The Mariners have six games remaining.

Octavio Dotel (5-2) pitched a perfect ninth, getting two strikeouts and Mark Kotsay’s clutch catch against the center-field wall on a hard-hit ball by Jose Lopez.

Erubiel Durazo hit a bloop double off Ron Villone (7-6) leading off the bottom half, a ball between left fielder Raul Ibanez and Lopez, the shortstop. The two didn’t communicate, and the ball went off Lopez’s glove and fell to the ground in shallow left.

Jermaine Dye’s groundout moved Durazo to third, then Scott Hatteberg drew an intentional walk to put runners on the corners. German ran for Durazo, and Marco Scutaro was also walked intentionally.

Crosby flied out to right on a 1-0 pitch to win it.

Dye and Scutaro homered earlier, but the A’s couldn’t hold their lead.

Willie Bloomquist tied the game at 5 with a three-run homer off Barry Zito in the seventh following consecutive singles by Lopez and Dan Wilson. Pitching coach Curt Young went out to chat with Zito before Bloomquist’s at-bat and, in hindsight, Oakland would have been better off taking him out then.

Suzuki singled after the homer, then Zito got Randy Winn to fly out before Chad Bradford came on to retire Edgar Martinez for the final out of the inning.

The A’s, the two-time defending division champions, have been in first place in the A.L. West for 53 straight days – their longest stretch since 1992 when they spent the final 61 days of the season in sole possession of first.

Suzuki went 1 for 4 with the seventh-inning single.

“It would be outstanding if he broke the record here and didn’t hurt us in the process,” said A’s infielder Mark McLemore, who played with Suzuki the past three seasons in Seattle. “I got to see the majority of the hits.”

Kotsay extended his hitting streak to 14 games with a first-inning single, the first of his four hits. Kotsay’s RBI single in the second gave the A’s 1,502 hits, breaking the previous club record of 1,501, set in 2000.

Zito retired 12 of his first 13 batters before Bret Boone’s leadoff double in the fifth and effectively shut down the Mariners’ lineup with his curveball. The left-hander, winless in five of his last six starts, allowed five runs and eight hits in 6 2/3 innings.

The A’s loaded the bases in the first and third innings against Jamie Moyer, who was done after five innings and 98 pitches. Last Tuesday, Moyer won at Anaheim for the first time in 18 starts – more than three months – after losing 10 straight decisions during that span.

The grounds crew worked nearly 22 hours straight to convert the field following Sunday night’s NFL game.