Mariners read Love’s Labour’s Lost, misinterpret it as “Love to Lose on Labor Day”, fall to A’s 5-4

The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo, or why can’t this team win on the road?

There’s a reason the A’s, despite all their struggles, are outperforming the Angels currently: where the Angels went deep on pitching, assembling a decent-ish buffet of starters and a very deep bullpen, the A’s put a bunch of big bopping boys in their lineup and told them to swing away. Do they strike out a lot? Yes! But also, sometimes they don’t, and today those big beefy bopping boys bopped beefily, bludgeoning the Blahriners with their bombastic bats to a 5-4 loss.

While the vibes are currently more rancid than the forgotten head of lettuce I just dug out of my vegetable drawer in preparation for trash day, it was not always so! Let us travel back to the four p.m. hour, when the Mariners jumped out to an early lead in this one, thanks to a first-inning, two-run home run by Cal Raleigh off A’s starter Osvldo Bido, a former Pirates prospect who has blossomed with the A’s. Bido had only allowed two home runs in his previous seven starts until running afoul of the Big Dumper:

In addition to Gary’s note above about what Cal is doing with respect to the Mariners franchise, he made a little baseball-wide history as well, tying Johnny Bench for the most home runs by a full-time catcher over his first four seasons with 87. With his next home run, he’ll tie Red Sox legend Rudy York, and if he can hit two more this season he’ll move into second place all-time, behind Hall of Famer Mike Piazza (92).

The Mariners tagged another run on in the third thanks to momentum machine Victor Robles, who swung at the first pitch he saw for a double, stole an unattended third base, and then raced home on a Julio Rodríguez flyout. Take a moment to soak this all in. It will be the last good thing that happened today.

Unfortunately, Logan Gilbert gave all those runs and more back in the bottom of the inning. With two outs, Gilbert got ahead of Lawrence Butler 0-2, only for Butler to battle back to 2-2 and end his seven pitch at-bat by lacing a poorly-located slider for a double. Brent Rooker then took the first pitch he saw, also a slider, for a ground ball double that just scooted past Josh Rojas at third, scoring the A’s first run of the day. Gilbert then committed the cardinal sin of a two-out walk to JJ Bleday, again after having him in an 0-2 count only to nibble with splitters and sliders that did not tempt Bleday into a swing. The big blow came in the next batter, when after falling behind Shea Langeliers 1-0 Gilbert left a slider on the plate that Langeliers demolished for a three-run, go-ahead home run. Crushing.

Outside of that one inning, Gilbert was able to shut down the A’s every other inning, despite occasionally falling behind or running bad counts. Gilbert was up one tick on almost all his pitches today except the sinker, which was up two ticks. But that bumped velo might not be the best thing for Gilbert; his four-seamer, despite regularly hitting 99, didn’t get a single whiff. Meanwhile, even though he gave up all those hits on the slider, it was also his most prolific whiff-getting pitch, helping him record nine strikeouts.

The Mariners did manage to tie it up in the sixth, facing a flagging Bido. Julio Rodríguez opened up the inning with a single and stole second, advancing to third on a one-out single from Randy Arozarena. Justin Turner then singled to score Julio, prompting Mark Kotsay to lift Bido for the lefty groundballer T.J. McFarland. McFarland got Polanco to line out, then threw pinch-hitter Dylan Moore four wholly noncompetitive pitches to get to lefty Josh Rojas, who was immediately pinch-hit for by...sigh...Mitch Garver, who lined out to end the inning and the scoring threat. Anyone who thinks Scott Servais was the driving force behind all the Mariners’ handedness matchups should be forced to watch this inning over and over again, Clockwork Orange-style.

The Mariners, squandering another baseunner in the seventh in the form of a Julio Rodríguez walk, had another opportunity in the eighth, facing hard-throwing but poor-controlling Michel Otañez. Justin Turner and Jorge Polanco worked back-to-back one-out walks, and pinch-runner Leo Rivas stole third while Dylan Moore struck out. But Mitch Haniger was punched out on three straight pitches, the third one of which was close but ruled to have just clipped the edge. Absolutely deflating, which could also be the logline for the 2024 season.

Collin Snider, on in the bottom of the ninth, walked the leadoff hitter, nine-hole hitting Max Schuemann, which is a double no-no, forcing Snider to do some fancy pitching against the top of the lineup. He extricated himself from the jam by getting Lawrence Butler to ground into a force out at second, then striking out Brent Rooker on a filthy sweeper before flashing a little leather making a play on an inning-ending soft groundout, again on the sweeper, from Bleday.

The A’s rolled out another rookie pitcher in Tyler Ferguson in the ninth, who struck out the side, forcing Austin Voth in to try to preserve the tie. Alack the day, he did not, as Langeliers took a sweeper that stayed too far up for the game-winning home run, and the Mariners drop yet another road game, putting them at 1-4 on this trip so far; a dismal echo of the road trip that cost Scott Servais his job.

To bring it back to the title of the recap for a second, Love’s Labour’s Lost ends in an atypical style for one of Shakespeare’s comedies: there’s not a single wedding, and one of the characters even remarks on how this story doesn’t end like “the old plays,” in one of Shakespeare’s little meta jokes about the theatre. Instead, the play closes with a reality check (“the words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo”) and a final cleaving of the characters: “You that way, we this way.” Consider this final road trip a reality check; a cleaving.