The heart of the Mariners showed up early, but the heart of the A’s order showed up late.

The Mariners lost 6-4 in Monday’s series opener against the Athletics. Emerson Hancock continued to look like new-and-improved version of himself, but he also threw a few bad pitches and was eventually burned. Cal Raleigh and Dominic Canzone homered, and Julio Rodríguez and Josh Naylor combined for five hits. But the Mariners ultimately could not overcome a 13-hit day for the Athletics.

Hancock entered the day as perhaps the story of the early season. He entered the day with a 2.75 FIP, 24.2% walk rate, and a top 20 WAR among qualified starting pitchers through four starts. It’s been a pleasant surprise for the Mariners, who have been desperate for some depth beyond their top-five starters. In fact, Hancock so far in 2026 has looked like much more than depth. He made a ton of changes over the offseason, as Michael Rosen pointed out for FanGraphs last week, including tweaking his repertoire and fundamentally changing how he throws the ball.

For the most part, Hancock looked like the new and improved version of himself on Monday. He continued to pound the zone with fastballs at 95 mph, issuing zero walks. And he continued to expand the zone with sweepers to righties and the changeups to lefties. He racked up 11 whiffs on 51 swings and three strikeouts.

Again, for the most part, it worked. Hancock scattered a few singles, stranding a couple early, generating a double play in the fourth, and even picking off Lawrence Butler in the fifth. Again, with no walks, those were the only runners who reached base against him.

Unfortunately, three others reached base and just kept running. In the fourth, Hancock threw an up and in fastball to Carlos Cortes leading off the inning — the pitch didn’t even catch the zone — but Cortes was sitting on it and turned it into the right field seats.

In the sixth, Hancock threw a middle-middle fastball to slugger Nick Kurtz, who crushed it out to center. Hancock threw the same pitch to the next batter, slugger Shea Langeliers, who also crushed it to center. The back-to-back homers tied the game at 3-3 and ended Hancock’s day.

In the end, the stat line for Hancock was five innings, seven hits, three strikeouts, no walks, and three homers. That’s not a good line. And it could have been worse. He also gave up a lot of hard contact in addition to the homers. Here’s an out he was fortunate to get, a sharp liner to center to leadoff the game, that seemed to knuckle and forced Julio to make an acrobatic play:

Still, this looked like the “good” version of Hancock we’ve seen so far from this year. The velocity was there. The movement was there. And the whiffs were there. Is it good to throw a pair of middle-middle fastballs to two of the best sluggers in the league? No. But this was a lot different from Hancock’s poor outings from the past three years.

Jose Ferrer was next in line in the sixth after the back-to-back homers. He immediately gave up a hard single against the shift to Cortes. He got the next two batters to fly out, but a broken bat single that Leo Rivas couldn’t quite get to and a hit by pitch loaded the bases. Ferrer then got Lawrence Butler to hit a hard chopper right back to the mound. Ferrer reached up and snagged it over his head, and after a bit of scampering to find the ball, he realized it was in his glove, tossed it to first, and escaped the inning

Matt Brash worked an uneventful seventh inning against the top of the order to keep the game tied at 3-3.

By the eighth, however, Dan Wilson seemed to be out of relievers. Andrés Muñoz and Gabe Speier had each pitched on back-to-back days, and Eduard Bazardo had thrown a lot of pitches recently as well. Wilson went with Casey Legumina, who wasn’t very good. He gave up a leadoff double, followed by a single and walk to load the bases. For a moment, it looked like he might escape with minimal damage after a sac fly to make the game 4-3. But a single from Butler plated the remaining runners to give the A’s a 6-3 lead, and eventually, the win.

It was overall a good day for the Mariners offense. In the bottom of the first, Raleigh flipped a homer the other way to open the scoring. Julio followed with a rocket single up the middle, and Naylor doubled him home to make it 2-0.

Naylor continued to swing at just about every pitch he saw Monday and this time picked up three hits, including his first two doubles of the season. He’s now up to a 54 wRC+ in 2026, which isn’t great but still about five-times higher than his 15 wRC+ from last Thursday. It’d be nice to see him start working some count again, but the results are starting to come around. He also picked up his first stolen base on the season and was back to being a pitcher’s pest on the bases, flinging his arms around at second base to annoy A’s starter JT Ginn, who appeared to cold him on his way to dugout after the first; Naylor was undeterred and continued to gesture wildly after his double in the third.

Dominic Canzone also had a nice day. He plopped a homer to right in the second inning to make it 3-0, and later lasered a double off the right field wall at 111.8 mph. Both pitches were elevated on the inner part of the plate — the pitches he’s the very best in the world at hitting.

The Mariners made things interesting late. In the eighth, down 6-3, Julio and Naylor each hit one-out singles. But Randy Arozarena flew out, as did Rob Refsnyder, who was still in the game after pinch-hitting for Luke Raley in the sixth.

Now, I defended Wilson’s bullpen management in my last recap on Saturday, and I stand by that today (even with the unfortunate circumstances that lead to Legumina in a late-leverage spot). But pulling Raley with one out and nobody on in the sixth to get a handedness matchup for Refsnyder seemed to come back to bite Wilson in the eighth when Refsnyder was left in to face a righty.

“Both (Canzone and Raley) have swung the bat very well and it’s tough to take them out of any game. And the same is true when (Refsnyder) in there and he’s swinging the bat well, it’s tough to take him out,” Wilson said on the decision after the game. “These are hard decisions…but it just felt like tonight, that was the decision to go with.”

I’m generally not a fan of doing an “um actually” to quotes like this. And Wilson is notoriously reluctant to say anything bad about his players for the sake of answering questions — I might even say that’s a good quality in a manger overall. But Refsnyder entered the day with one hit on the season, and Raley entered the day with 21 hits on the season. They are not swinging the bat equally “well.”

Again, I’m not really taking Wilson’s quote at face value here. I’m sure he knows Raley is hot and Refsnyder is not. I think the rationale here is that this is simply the Mariners’ process, and they’re not going to abandon that process for a hot hand in a small sample. Raley is hitting well, but he doesn’t have even 100 plate appearances, and he’s not won the full-time job quite yet. It’s also hard to do counterfactuals like this. Perhaps the A’s would have used a different pitcher if Raley was still in the game, and certainly handedness is not the only consideration in pitcher-hitter matchups.