Mariners finish off road sweep of lowly A’s

By Adam Jude / The Seattle Times

OAKLAND, Calif. — The distance from the visitors clubhouse to the visiting team’s batting cage at Oakland Coliseum has to be the longest such walk at any stadium in the major leagues.

It’s at least a couple hundred yards from the clubhouse, located underneath the stands behind home plate, to the cages way out under the outfield stands, through an opening in the center-field wall.

Before games over the past few days here, many of the Seattle Mariners hitters have made that slow stroll alone through outfield, bats in their hands, base knocks on their minds.

It’s a lot of time to contemplate.

A lot of time to find an answer to the most pressing question surrounding this club 30 games into the season:

What can the Mariners do to fix their offense?

At the end of an 11-day, three-city, 5,600-mile road trip, the Mariners believe they might have found something.

The Mariners got their bats going early Thursday afternoon in a 5-3 victory to complete a three-game sweep of the Oakland A’s, who at 6-26 continued their historically dreadful start to the season.

The bottom of the lineup did the heavy lifting for the Mariners. Taylor Trammell hit a two-run home run in the third inning, and Kolten Wong had a key two-out, two-run single in the fourth inning.

George Kirby put together another quality start as the Mariners (15-16) won their fourth straight game and finished 5-4 on their longest road trip of the season.

They’ll head home to start their first series of the season against Houston on Friday night at T-Mobile Park.

The Mariners have had to rely heavily on a pitching staff to carry the team through the first month of the season.

“Their backs are sore,” manager Scott Servais said.

Discussions among hitters started in the Mariners dugout late in Wednesday’s game. Those talks continued in the clubhouse.

Eugenio Suarez summed up the feeling after his three-run home run in the 10th inning late Wednesday propelled a second straight dramatic, come-from-behind win over the A’s.

Do less, he told teammates. Relax. Stop trying so hard.

“Sometimes when you try too much, the result’s not there,” Suarez said.

Cliché? Yeah, maybe.

But the Mariners have to try something — anything — to jump-start their bats. They entered Wednesday ranked dead last among 30 MLB teams with a .218 batting average, 20th in runs scored (4.3 per game) and 29th in strikeout rate (26.4%).

“I do know we have to be better offensively. We need more production,” Servais said Thursday morning. “We need all those things that aren’t happening. It is going to happen. We will run into a 10- or 12-game stretch where our offense is killing it.”

Servais, at least, has been encouraged by the chatter his hitters have initiated among themselves.

“As much as guys are frustrated or not happy with where their swings at or how their production’s going, at the end of the day they all want to win,” Servais said. “And I give a ton of credit to our guys. As bleak as it has seemed here for a couple nights in a row, we’ve rallied, and we’ve rallied because this group believes in themselves.”

Servais likened the Mariners’ approach at the plate lately to the volume on a stereo.

“We have the volume cranked to 10 right now,” he said. “You can certainly see it when guys are in scoring position and we need to get the guy in from third. Let’s turn the dial back to about 6 or 7. That’s easy listening. I’m old. I much prefer easy listening to the loud stuff.”

To dig out of their early-season rut, the Mariners need the top of their lineup — Julio Rodriguez and Ty France especially — to start hitting like they can.

On two different occasions Wednesday night, in the third and fifth innings, Rodriguez and France came to the plate with two runners on base on no outs. None of the runners advanced in any of those plate appearances, and the Mariners went scoreless in both innings.

“We’re swinging a little too hard,” Servais said.

Rodriguez was 0-for-4 Thursday afternoon with a walk. He was also 0-for-4 with a walk on Wednesday night after missing the previous three games with a sore back.