Month: August 2022

Oakland Athletics’ Skye Bolt, second from right, is congratulated by teammates after hitting a sacrifice fly that scored David MacKinnon against the Miami Marlins Wed Aug 24, 2022 (AP News photo)

By Jerry Feitelberg

OAKLAND–The Oakland A’s won the finale of the three-game series with the Miami Marlins 3-2 on Wednesday afternoon at the Oakland Coliseum. It was a beautiful afternoon in Oakland. The temperature at the start of the game was 71 degrees, and there was not a cloud in the sky.

The game was an old-fashioned pitcher’s duel between lefty Cole Irvin for Oakland and lefty Jesus Luzardo for Oakland. Irvin had one of his better outings as he went seven innings, allowed two hits, and had no runs. Irvin struck out a career-high eleven batters and did not issue a walk.

The A’s were ahead 2-0 when Irvin left the game and was in line for his seventh win. Unfortunately for Irvin, Oakland’s bullpen gave up a run in the eighth and one in the ninth to tie the game. 

Miami’s starter, Jesus Luzardo, was dominant for the game’s first five innings. He did not allow a hit and walked just one hitter. The former A’s hurler looked like he was on his way to a win. The A’s had other thoughts as they broke through the spell and put two runs on the board in the bottom of the sixth.

A’s second baseman Jonah Bride led off the sixth with a single. Tony Kemp laid down a sacrifice bunt to send Bride to second. Nick Allen followed with a soft single to short right-field. Bride stopped at third. Bride attempted to score on Shea Langeliers’ ground ball to Marlins’ third baseman Jon Berti.

Berti nailed Bride on the throw to the catcher. Luzardo walked Sean murphy to load the bases. Chad Pinder singled to drive in Allen and Langeliers. The A’s led 2-0 after six complete

A’s manager Mark Kotsay brought in Zach Jackson to pitch the eighth. Jackson hit Joey Wendle with a pitch. Peyton Burdick reached on a fielder’s choice. Wendle was out at second. Jackson struck out JJ Bleday for the second out. Burdick was thrown out at second attempting to steal.

The Marlins challenged the call. The play was overturned after a review. Jon Berti walked. Miguel Rojas singled to in Burdick. Kotsay summoned Dany Jimenez from the bullpen. Jimenez retired Jesus Aguilar for the third out.

The Marlins tied the game in the top of the ninth. Jimenez was still pitching for Oakland. With one out, Marlins’ catcher Nick Fortes homered over the wall in left field. Jimenez retired the next two batters. The A’s failed to score in their half of the ninth. 

The A’s won the game in the bottom of the tenth. David MacKinnon was the ghost runner at second base. Mark Kotsay wanted the next hitter to lay down a sacrifice bunt to send MacKinnon to third. Marlins’ pitcher Richard Bleier uncorked a wild pitch.

MacKinnon went to third. Skye Bolt ended the game when his fly ball to centerfield was deep enough to get MacKinnon home with the winning run. Oakland wins 3-2.

Game Notes: With the win, the ‘s are 46-79. The Marlins fall to 54-70.

The Line score for Oakland was three runs, four hits, and no errors. The line for Miami was two runs, five hits, and no errors. A.J. Puk was the winning pitcher. Bleier took the loss for Miami.

The time of the game was 2:40. Three 3901 fans watched the A’ win in extras.

The A’s host the New York Yankees for four games starting Thursday night. Former Yankee James Kaprielian (3-7, 4.29) will be on the mound to face his former team. The Yankees have not announced their starters for any of the games yet.

Thursday night’s game will start at 6:38 pm.

Oakland Athletics’ Kirby Snead pitches against the Miami Marlins in the top of the ninth at the Oakland Coliseum on Tue Aug 23, 2022 (AP News photo)

Miami (54-69). 5. 8. 0

Oakland (45-79). 3. 8. 0

Tuesday, August 23, 2022

By Lewis Rubman

OAKLAND–Monday night the A’s were handcuffed by Maimi’s novice hurler Edward Cisneros, who held them to a couple of hits over eighth innings in a riveting contest that the Marlins won, 3-0. Tuesday night, the home team came up against Pablo López, now in his fifth major league campaign after seven years’ seasoning in the minors.

He came to work today with a 7-8, 3.83 record for the 53-69 Fish and a well earned reputation as a strikeout pitcher. Indeed, last year he set a major league record when he struck out the first nine hitters he faced in a game against the Atlanta Braves.

When tonight’s contest ended with 5-3 win for the Marlins, the Venezuelan right hander got win, giving him a record of 8-8, 3.66. He shut out Oakland over six innings, allowing them only four hits and a walk while setting five of them down on strikes. He threw 91 pitches, 30 of which were walks.

The Athletics went with southpaw Zach Logue, who had logged a 3-7, 6.35 mark in the majors while shuttling a half dozen times between the Las Vegas and Oakland rosters. He went 3-4, 6.29 with the triple A Aviators.

Logue pitched effectively over 5-1/3 frames tonight, holding the Marlins to two runs on three hits , one of which went the distance, over that span. One of those runs was posthumous. Logue struck out seven and didn’t allow a walk. He threw 66 pitches, 47 of them counting for strikes. His bullpen let him down, and he ended up being charged with the loss, leaving him 3-8, 6.04 at the end of the game.

The teams swapped goose eggs for three innings until Brian Anderson, leading off the fourth for the fish, sent Logue’s second offering, a 90 mph four seamer 403 into left field, flying over the Mechanics Bank sign and into the sparsely populated front row seats. It was the 11th homer off Logue in 48-1/3 major league innings this year.

Logue recovered to retire the next six men he faced, but Luke Williams led off the sixth with a double to the left field corner and moved on to third on Miguel Rojas’ productive ground out to second. That ended Logue’s mound tenure, and he gave way to Domingo Acevedo.

The right handed reliever walked Anderson. The wheels started coming off the A’s wagon when Jesús Aguilar hit a bouncing grounder that Vimael Machín let bounce off his glove at third. Williams would have scored in any case, but Aguilar’s hit-for that is how it was scored-kept Miami in attack mode.

Joey Wendle grounded out to Machín, but Aguilar and Anderson each moved up 90 feet. That set up Jerar Encarnacióń’s double to left, which brought the two runners home and upped the Marlins’ lead to 4-0. But Miami kept on rolling.

Jacob Stallings singled to right center, and, when Kemp made a brilliant catch of Peyton Burdick’s fly to shallow right field to end the slaughter, the fish were five up on the battered Athletics.

Battered but unbowed, Oakland loaded the bases on López in their half of the sixth on an infield single by Cal Stevenson, a double by Murphy, and a walk to Brown. But Pinder went down swinging for the third out.

Recent addition Joel Payamps made his Oakland debut in the top of the seventh and gave up a two out double to Rojas but emerged unscathed when he got Anderson to pop out to Vogt at first. He also pitched a scoreless eighth, allowing a two out single to Encarnación.

Tommy Nance replaced López at the start of the home seventh and retired the side in order. He also pitched a scoreless eighth.

Kirby Snead performed the formality of pitching a perfect top of the ninth before Cole Sulser left the Miami bullpen to try to put the A’s away for the night. He gave up a leadoff double to right by Murphy.

After Brown flew out to left, Pinder’s single to right moved Murphy to third. Vogt then sent grounder past second sacker Williams into center that plated Murphy, moved Pinder to third, and ended Sulser’s brief mound tenure. In came southpaw Tanner Scott, so Jonah Bride pinch hit for the left handed hitting Machín. Scott retired Bride on a grounder to short, earning his 19th save.

Tomorrow afternoon at 12:37, ex-Athletic Jesús Luzardo (3-5,3.44) will start for the fish against his old teammates. Cole Irvin (6-11,3.33) will be on the mound for the A’s.

Edward Cabrera was untouchable as the Miami Marlins pitcher threw for a shutout and was relieved after pitching eight innings against the Oakland A’s at the Oakland Coliseum on Mon Aug 22, 2022 (AP News photo)

Miami (52-69). 3. 7. 0

Oakland (45-77). 0. 3. 0

Monday, August 22, 2022

By Lewis Rubman

OAKLAND–Your Oakland A’s, fresh from taking two out of three games from the Seattle Mariners, a feat that dropped the M’s into a four way virtual tie for the last American League playoff slot, faced a less daunting opponent at the Coliseum tonight.

The Miami Marlins, coming to town with a mark of 52-69, aren’t within hailing distance of an NL wild card berth, but they’re having a better season than the A’s, whose success against the Mariners left them at 45-77.

Still, the records of tonight’s struggling opponents would lead us to expect a tight game between them. What we got didn’t start that way, but it ended up as one, a 3-0 Miami win that went down to the wire.

Sometimes you can’t win for losing. Last night, Austin Pruitt earned his first major league save, shutting the Mariners down in the pressure packed ninth inning of a 5-3 Oakland victory. Today he was designated for assignment to make room on the roster for the newly acquired Joel Payamps, like Pruitt a right handed pitcher.

The visitors sent 24 year old Edward Cabrera, a right hander rated by MLB.com as Miami’s number two prospect at the season’s start. He’d been living up to that evaluation so far, entering the game at 3-1, 1.79

Starting for the home team was another righthander, Adam Oller, who has shuttled between the Las Vegas Aviators and the Athletics and between starting and relieving. He was 2-5, 6.31 when he threw the first pitch of the game at 6:41. He was 7-2, 6.63 for August, his best month in the bigs.

He struggled early, giving up three runs, all earned, in his first three innings on the mound. His pitch count had reached 82 after four, and yet he hung in until seventh, throwing 111 pitches over six innings, holding the Marlins hitless and scoreless in the last three of them.

Oller gave up a total of five hits and another five walks while notching a pair of strikeouts. 62 of his offerings were considered strikes. He took the loss and now owns a record of 2-6, 6.41.

If Oller’s outing was gutsy, Cabrera’s was outstanding. He threw eight scoreless innings of two hit ball in which he allowed three walks while striking out seven. Of his 101 pitches, 63 went for strikes. The rookie was masterful and earned his fourth win against one loss, lowering his ERA to 1.41 in the process.

Miami threatened early with a one out double off the State Farm sign in right center by Jon Berti and walks to Bryan Anderson and JJ Bleday.

Oller wriggled out of that jam thanks to a sparkling double play that featured a behind the back flip from Nick Allen at short to second baseman Jonah Bride, whose throw to Seth Brown easily beat catcher Nick Fortes to first. It took Oller 28 pitches to get through the frame.

Cabrera also had control problems in the first, walking the first two batters he faced. But he escaped with 24 offerings. A long night seemed to be in store for us.

There was no waiting around for Miami to score in their half of the second. Charles Leblanc took a ball and then launched an 88 mph cutter 409 feet into the largely unpopulated left field seats.

Tony Kemp was having a busy night out there in left. He had gone to the warning track to catch Joey Wendle’s deep fly that opened the game and made a fine jumping grab of Lewin Díaz’s blast up against the wall on the at bat that followed Leblanc’s round tripper, the second of his one month old major league career.

Allen made another brilliant play in the fourth, a breathtaking barehanded grab in the shift of a Díaz ground ball up the middle and a laser throw that beat him to first.

One inning later Anderson became the second fish to hit the State Farm sign for a double. This one came with a man out and Berti on first with a walk. Berti scored, making it 2-0. For variety’s sake, Bleday tatooed the left centerfield wall to drive in Anderson with another two bagger. The back to back doubles now had the home team down, three-zip.

The score still was 3-0 when Oller left the game after his six innings of hard labor, replaced by Norge Ruíz. With one down, he gave Berti a free pass and struck Anderson out looking. Then Bleday hit a strange single. It was a liner that landed in medium right field, in front of. Bride, who was playing there in a shift.

The ball took a weird bounce to the right and, before you knew it, instead of three outs, there were runners on first and third. Bleday stole second, and now there were two runners in scoring position with Fortes at the plate. Ruíz rose to the occasion and caught the Miami catcher looking at a fast ball for the third strike.

Ruíz ran into. more trouble in the eighth, some of it of his own making. Leblanc sent Stevenson to the center field warning track to haul down his lead off blast to center. Díaz fisted a single to left and advanced to second on a wild pitch to Fortes.

Peyton Burdick whacked a high line drive to left on full count slider. It took another spectacular running catch by Kemp on the warning track to convert what would have been an RBI double or worse into the third out.

Portslider Kirby Snead took over to pitch the top of the eighth for Oakland and set the visitors down in order.

Southpaw Tanner Scott, with 17 saves in 22 attempts, threw a 1-2-3 bottom of the ninth for his 18th save.

Let’s hope that tomorrow’s 6:40 game, with Zach Logue (3-7, 6.35) starting for the A’s and Pablo López (7-8, 3.83) will prove as exciting. Reportorial ethics prevent me from suggesting whose victory we should hope for.