The Oakland A’s Ramon Laureano is back in the line up and look for him to make more of these exciting plays such as his over the fence fourth inning catch of the Los Angeles Angels Justin Upton at the Oakland Coliseum on Wed Jun 16, 2021 as Laureano and the A’s open a three game series in New York Fri Jun 18, 2021 (San Francisco Chronicle photo)

Athletics VS Yankees—The Series—Game One

By Barbara Mason

The Oakland A’s are probably playing the best baseball that we have seen them play this entire season. They have now won six games in a row, the latest a sweep of the Los Angeles Angels who were red hot coming into the series. The A’s cooled off the Angels in all three games, in fact the Angels weren’t quite sure what hit them. Stringing together hits, home runs coupled with remarkable defensive play rendered the Angels relatively ineffective.

Now we have the long anticipated series between the Oakland A’s and the New York Yankees this weekend. Whether it is played in Oakland or in Yankee Stadium it is without doubt one of the most popular series played all season.

The good news for the A’s is that they are playing even better baseball on the road than they are playing at home. After Oakland’s last two series at home it’s really hard to imagine what that would look like. Right now every player on this team is playing at an extremely high level not only offensively but defensively. The pitching; starters, relief pitching and closers have been sensational.

This Friday night Yankee Stadium will be rocking with the park open at full capacity, which is 46,537, for the series. This will be the biggest house that the Oakland A’s have played in front of since 2019. Since 2013 Oakland has seen some nice results as it pertains to the win column for the A’s vs Yankee series. This is of course a new season and we will find out if history will repeat itself tomorrow night in Game One.

Oakland’s James Kaprielian will take the mound for Game One and for the Yankee’s it will be Jameson Taillon who will get the nod. Kaprielian has had a great start with a 2.51 ERA though his first six games. He has proven to be tough against right-handed batters. He has held them to a .131 batting average which could mean trouble for New York. New York’s Taillon has a 5.74 ERA with a 1-4 record coming into this game.

When it comes to team leaders, Oakland’s biggest threat is Matt Olson who comes into this game with18 home runs. His batting average is .297 and he has 49 runs batted in. The Yankees have a threat of their in Aaron Judge with a batting average of .282 and 15 homeruns. He has brought in 36 runs. New York will be leaning heavily on him.

This series is bound to be a dandy because you never know what to expect from New York. They have had their struggles from time to time this season but have nicely recovered from those setbacks. First pitch is scheduled at 4:05 PT.