Nick Kurtz saw his 48-game on-base streak stop Tuesday night when he went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts in a 4-1 loss to the Seattle Mariners.
The run matched the longest in Athletics history — 48 straight games, the same mark Mark McGwire set in 1996 — and was the longest in the majors since Shin-Soo Choo's 52-game streak in 2018. Kurtz’s streak therefore carried both team and league weight: it reset expectations for what a contact-and-walk hitter can do over an extended stretch and invited comparison with baseball’s all-time standard for getting on base.
The decisive moments were blunt and straightforward. Mariners starter Emerson Hancock struck Kurtz out in the first inning, induced a lineout to center in the fourth and punched him out again in the sixth. Kurtz had one last chance in the eighth but struck out against Gabe Speier, finishing the night 0-for-4 and putting an end to the run.
Even with the streak halted, the numbers that propelled it remain. Kurtz leads the majors with a.437 on-base percentage and 52 walks this season, and he has eight home runs, 37 RBIs and a.270 batting average. The stretch does not erase those figures; it helped produce them. For readers who want the franchise angle, more on the club mark is here:
The broader historical frame sharpens what just happened: Ted Williams’ major league record of 84 consecutive games reaching base in 1949 still towers over modern runs, but Kurtz’s 48-game streak put him beside McGwire in Athletics lore and made him the most consistent on-base presence in the big leagues this season.
The friction in the aftermath is the simplest contradiction: Kurtz’s streak ended in a winless night at the plate, yet he still leads the majors in on-base percentage and walks. The streak’s close did not, and will not immediately, change his underlying production; it simply halted the narrative of consecutive games reached. That gap — performance intact, streak broken — is where the story now lives.
The most consequential unanswered question is plain: will Kurtz turn this into the start of another run? The available facts do not say whether he will begin a new on-base streak in his next game. What remains clear is that, even without the streak, Kurtz’s ability to draw walks and reach base keeps him central to the Athletics’ lineup and the most closely watched hitter whenever he steps to the plate.
