By Morris Phillips

What went horribly wrong instead morphed into a beautiful ending at the Coliseum on Saturday night.

The A’s were just two outs away from a 1-0 victory behind Scott Kazmir’s stellar pitching when the previously closed door opened for the Twins allowing them to push across a pair of runs to take a 2-1 lead.

But with Billy Burns playing catalyst and motoring around the bases, the A’s backed up their run to tie in the ninth with the winning run in the 10^th.  For the A’s, the win and the surprising method of victory was everything: finally a narrow win late, at home, in front of a big crowd with the Gatorade bath and whip cream chaser for game-winning hit man, Stephen Vogt.

“It’s huge to comeback and win that game for everyone’s sake,” Vogt said.

In other words, it felt like the 2013-2014, instead of the downer 2015 has been to date.

The A’s improved to 42-51 on the season, good enough to remain in the AL West conversation despite still sitting in the league’s basement, just games behind the Red Sox, White Sox and Mariners.   At 9 ½ games behind the Astros, the A’s are one of only two last-place teams (Boston) that are fewer than 10 games out of first place.

Kazmir—as well as Burns—have been outstanding at home at the O.co Coliseum this season and that continued on Saturday.   In 10 starts at home, Kazmir is 4-2 with a 1.36 ERA, and he was on his game against the Twins working in an especially effective changeup to go with his fastball.  Kazmir worked into the ninth inning, allowing four hits through eight, and calming a Twin’s offense that had fashioned a four-game win streak.

But as soon as things looked in hand, they weren’t.  With one out, Brian Dozier’s infield hit should have prompted Brett Lawrie to eat the ball when he gloved it, but instead his blind throw of the spin eluded Ike Davis at first, and allowed Dozier to move to second.  Without a plan set in concrete for the ninth, manager Bob Melvin decided that was enough for Kazmir after 112 pitches and he brought on closer Tyler Clippard.

But Clippard intensified the situation by hitting the next batter, Torii Hunter.  That mistake forced Clippard into having to pitch to Joe Mauer, and the Twins’ talented slugger delivered a game-tying double off the wall in right.  Miguel Sano’s sacrifice fly then gave Minnesota the lead.

The bottom of the ninth didn’t seem to hold much promise for Oakland, with closer Glen Perkins retiring the first two batters and getting two strikes on Brett Lawrie.  But the always-hustling third baseman sent a grounder to deep short and beat the throw by a step.

Lawrie immediately went from hustling to paying attention, advancing to second on a pass ball that never left the batter’s circle and quickly recovered by catcher Kurt Suzuki.  A couple pitches later, Jake Smolinski delivered a perfectly-placed flyball to left that scored Lawrie to tie the game,

In the bottom of the 10^th, the A’s struck again with Burns leading off with a two-bagger into the right field gap.  With Stephen Vogt at the plate, Burns surprised everyone by stealing third by the slimmest of margins.

“(Reliever) Casey (Fien) had a leadoff double and the stolen base was disappointing, because we saw him bluff on the first pitch like he wanted to go, and so I tried to get their attention to try to slow him down, but it was a big play,” Minnesota manager Paul Molitor said of the sequence.

Burns’ heads-up play left Vogt with all the leverage in his battle with Fien, and he delivered the game-winning hit through the drawn in left-side of the defense.   It was Vogt’s first regular-season, walk-off hit and it set off a celebration of Oakland-ish proportions.

Burns is hitting .359 at the Coliseum and leads all major-league rookies with 85 hits.

On Sunday, the A’s look to capture the series with Jesse Chavez facing former Athletic Tommy Milone at 1:05pm.