Mariners take over first place in AL West with huge road sweep of A's

Adam Jude, The Seattle Times on May 27, 2026

Published in Baseball

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WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Coming into a rival’s short-term home, the Seattle Mariners finally found something of a comfort zone of their own this week.

They dominated a three-game series against the Athletics and ripped away sole possession of first place in the American League West for the first time this season.

All along, this is where the Mariners expected to be.

Whether they can make their stay atop the division something more than a temporary home will take more than a few good days and a few good swings, but their 9-1 victory Wednesday afternoon revealed a killer instinct this Mariners team hasn’t shown at any point in a wonky start to a season of such great hope.

The M’s outscored the A’s 22-4 in the series and claimed first place in the division after the A’s had held it for the previous 45 days.

Logan Gilbert set the tone for a winning road trip with a scoreless start in Kansas City on Friday. He was even better to close out the trip Wednesday in the Mariners’ earliest start time of the year, scattering five hits over six shutout innings against a potent A’s lineup in a tiny Triple-A ballpark.

Gilbert walked two and struck out six. In these two road starts, he combined for 11 2/3 scoreless innings, with seven hits, four walks and 12 strikeouts, lowering his ERA to 3.69 in his first 12 starts of the season.

Rob Refsnyder hit a three-run homer in the first inning, Julio Rodríguez added a three-run blast in the eighth and rookie Colt Emerson drove in two runs with his first career triple as the M’s tallied 12 hits for their fourth consecutive double-digit hit game.

Refsnyder turned on a 3-2 changeup that A’s lefty Jeffrey Springs left up in the zone and yanked it out to left field for a three-run home run in the first inning. That came one batter after A’s second baseman Jeff McNeil made a two-out throwing error to extend the inning for the M’s.

It was the third home run for the 35-year-old Refsnyder — first since his pinch-hit, ninth-inning game-winner in St. Louis on April 26 — in what has been a challenging start to his Mariners tenure.

Refsnyder entered the game hitting .113 with a .392 OPS, but he has a long track record of success against left-handed pitching and the M’s manager Dan Wilson continues to insert him into the lineup because of that.

Refsnyder also has a track record against Springs; his 107.7-mph blast Wednesday was his third homer against Springs in nine career at-bats.

In the eighth, Rodríguez turned on a 97-mph fastball at the top of the zone from A’s right-hander Luis Medina and sent it 418 feet out to the entrance of the visitors’ clubhouse beyond the fence in left-center. It was Rodríguez’s 10th homer of the season.

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