Behind Brett Anderson, the Oakland A's woulda beaten up most MLB teams Saturday night.  Unfortunately for them, they messed with the wrong Marines.

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=== The 3rd Run ===

9th inning, score tied 2-2, and the A's now running with their third ace short reliever of the evening.  (The Oakland A's had the best ERA in the league last year, by far.  When you go through 20 pitchers and they all average a 116 ERA+, that is impressive.)

Tie game, two on, 1 out, LH Ichiro up, and LHP Brian Fuentes on the mound.  

Fuentes has 72 saves the last two years, almost 200 saves on his career, and is possessor of one of the big leagues' few true Frisbee breaking pitches.

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Ichiro hit one softly to the first baseman Barton, who threw wild home, and Jack Wilson scored.  

This play will presumably go down as another one the A's botched, and that's what it looked like.  Problem is, that's not what occurred.

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With two strikes on Ichiro (IIRC), Fuentes threw one of his best Frisbees.  And it was in a murderous location:  breaking inside, inside, insiiiiiide the strike zone .... until well after the swing was underway ...  but then finishing six inches outside, shin high.

Fuentes can't throw a better pitch, period.

I cannot imagine that ANY other left hand hitter makes contact, up to and including Ted Williams, but .... Ichiro bent over, pepper-swung with his lead arm, and impossibly squared the ball up.  He might as well have been hitting a pitch on the bounce.

The Mariners put that strikeout pitch in play when no other team in baseball would have done so (lefthanded), and it rolled toward Daric Barton.

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Barton is an ex-catcher who had a UZR rating of +14 last season; he and Ike Davis had 3x the UZR of any other first basemen in baseball.   

As Barton fielded the ball, he saw the second baseman Ellis out of his peripheral vision.  Ellis was about 40 feet from the bag as Ichiro was 55 feet away and slamming the stick into fifth gear.  

Ellis is not a wide receiver in the West Coast offense, and he's not going to be able to receive a 3-4 assist as if he were Wesley Welker going over the middle.

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Of course, Barton can't force Olivo at second; Ellis is breaking for 1B, and the SS is nowhere in the vicinity.

Barton, dismayed that the A's were losing the ballgame on this play, did the only thing with the ball available - throw home.  It was hopeless - Jack Wilson was almost beginning his slide.  Barton hurried his throw home and missed by a couple of yards.  This left the superficial impression that the play was about bad defense.

True, the missed throw did allow Olivo to take 3B, but that wasn't the key to the victory for the Mariners.  The A's were never to tie the game again, anyway.

..............

And then the A's slumped and their chests collapsed, after the Mariners hit them in the face with a sock full of nickels.  

On the next play, career closer Brian Fuentes, who has faced much scarier game situations, threw a wild pitch and Olivo scored.   And the rest of the game was an M's celebration.  Way to fight back, there, Bay Bros.  You're gonna need to show more than that.

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