Mariners struggle to get bats going but edge Athletics 3-2

SEATTLE – Another drama-free victory with plenty of offense?

Come on, that’s not the Mariners’ style of baseball.

Instead, they returned to the familiar nail-biting nature of one-run games.

Unlike recent failures, they prevailed 3-2 over the Oakland Athletics on Tuesday night.

Did the victory come with a cost?

The sight of Ty France laying face down in the batter’s box after taking a 97-mph fastball off his left wrist certainly put a damper on the win. It was France who provided the go-ahead run in the game.

After an abysmal outing in Boston in which he didn’t get out of the second inning, Mariners starter Marco Gonzales came back with a much better offering.

Gonzales worked six innings, allowing two runs on five hits with a walk and four strikeouts.

Both runs came in the first inning.

He allowed a leadoff single to speedy outfielder Esteury Ruiz, who promptly nabbed his MLB-leading 25th stolen base. Ruiz scored on a Ramon Laureano’s single to right field. With two outs, Carlos Perez scored Laureano with a single to left.

Given how relentless their at-bats were in the series opener and the subsequent offensive production that followed, overcoming a two-run deficit didn’t seem like it would be too much of a problem.

But A’s starter Luis Medina, who displayed plenty of talent and stuff, including a fastball up to 98 mph and biting breaking pitches, held the Mariners scoreless and almost hitless for the first five innings.

Julio Rodriguez’s single with two outs in the first inning was the only hit the Mariners registered over the first four innings. Their only other base runners came from walks. Seattle hitters did hit several balls hard – seven balls with exit velocities over 95 mph – that were outs.

But the Mariners broke through in the fifth inning. With two outs, Tom Murphy ripped a double down the left-field line for their second hit of the game.

On a night when the chilly air and swirling winds due to the roof being open had knocked down a few well-struck fly balls, the power hitter that isn’t, J.P. Crawford, tied the game with a two-run homer. In a season in which he’s hitting the ball harder than ever before, Crawford pulled a line drive over the wall in right field for his second homer of the season.

The Mariners took the lead six pitches later. A frustrated Medina left a 1-2 curveball over the middle of the plate that France deposited off the electronic out-of-town scoreboard above the Mariners bullpen, breaking one of the panels.

Gonzales and the Mariners bullpen made the lead hold up over the next four innings. Gonzales worked a scoreless sixth while Trevor Gott, Justin Topa and Paul Sewald each provided a scoreless frame to secure the victory.