The Oakland A’s Esteuery Ruiz (1) steals second base while Chicago White Sox Elivis Andrus (1) waits for the late throw at the Oakland Coliseum on Fri Jun 30, 2023 (AP News photo)

By Troy Ewers

OAKLAND–On a Friday in front of 14,181 fans. The Oakland A’s (22-62) played the Chicago White Sox (36-48) and Luis Medina of the A’s faced off against Tanner Banks of the White Sox and Medina put on a stellar performance in his five innings.

Even though the Sox got a run on Medina in the first inning, the rest of his outing was a shutout where even when Chicago would load the bases, Medina would escape the inning and still have the calmness and confidence to keep going.

On the other side of the coin for the A’s, five innings resulted in five runs. In the second inning Oakland put up four of those five runs. It started with Shea Langeliers hitting an RBI single that scored JJ Bleday to tie the game, 1-1.

Jace Peterson hit a sac fly to left field and Aledmys Diaz scored off that to take the lead, 2-1. A Tony Kemp triple would then score Langeliers, 3-1 and then finally Esteury Ruiz hit a sac fly that scored Kemp, 4-1. Also Ruiz got his 41st stolen base in the first inning making him a MLB leader in stolen bases.

The fifth run was a Carlos Perez solo home run and this was his fifth home run of the season, 5-1 A’s. It was a bullpen game for the A’s from the sixth inning to the end and they held the White Sox off, but Chicago tried to make it interesting with three runs, including a solo home run by Luis Robert Jr.

The threat of a comeback for Chicago never phased the A’s, because they got two insurance runs in the eighth inning and the game ended with a score of 7-3, Oakland A’s win!!!

Saturday’s game is the second of the series and on the hill is Dylan Cease of the White Sox (3-3, 4.04) and it’s unknown at the time who’s pitching for Oakland. First pitch 1:07pm PT.