Oakland A’s second baseman Zack Gelof left tags out St Louis Cardinals runner Brendan Donavon (right) trying to steal second in the top of the seventh at the Oakland Coliseum on Tue Apr 16, 2024 (AP News photo)

Tuesday, April 16, 2024

St. Louis (8-9). 001 002 000. 3. 4. 1

Athletics (7-11). 010 010 000. 2. 5. 1

Time: 2:29

Attendance: 3,296

By Lewis Rubman

OAKLAND–Forget about the 5.17 earned run average that JP Sears brought with him to tonight’s bout with the St. Louis Cardinals and instead focus on how brilliantly he had performed in his previous start, 6-1/3 one hit innings against the Rangers in Arlington five day ago.

Tuesday night the 28 year old lefty with a little over a year’s seniority in the show wasn’t quite as sharp, but he was damned good. He went five innings and allowed one run, earned, on two hits and three walks, while striking out a couple of Cards. He threw 82 pitches, 51 for strikes, and left with a no decision and a record of 1-1, 4.35.

The Cards sent starboarder Lance Lynn, a veteran of over a dozen years of the major league wars, against the A’s promising southpaw. The journeyman brought an 0-0, 2.63 mark to the game with him and was in vintage form tonight.

He lasted seven full frames and held the Athletics to two runs, only one of which was earned. He yielded five hits, one of which left the park, and a walk., He also notched a K. 65 of his 101 pitches were counted as strikes. He reduced his ERA to 2.18 and finally broke into the win column; he’s now 1-0. Athletic speed combined with sloppy Redbird fielding put the A’s ahead, 1-0, in the second.

Tyler Nevin beat out a single to short and advanced to second on Maysn Winn’s errant throw. He scored on Kyle McCann’s single to center. All the outs in that frame came on fly balls to the warning track. Two of them were corralled at the wall.

The Cards evened things up in their next turn at the plate. Sears walked Masyn Winn, who promptly stole second. Jordan Walker lived up to his name. Both of them advanced 90 feet on Michael Siani’s sacrifice to third. Brendan Donovan’s grounder to third brought Winn home with the tying tally.

McCann unknotted the score with a lead off four bagger on a full count four seamer, a 385 foot blast over the auxiliary scoreboard in right center field, in the bottom of the fourth, his first major league home run.

Dany Jiménez relieved Sears for the visitors’ sixth, and his turn on the mound was a disaster, mostly his fault but aggravated by a throw to nowhere by JJ Bleday. Arenado led off with a clean single to left. Jiménez walked Iván Herrera and Lars Nootbaar.

Winn then lifted a sacrifice fly to Bleday in center. That brought Arenado home while the two others held their base. That is, until Bleday heaved a slovenly throw to a spot in the infield that was nowhere near any possible cutoff man.

So now there were two runners in scoring position, and Walker’s fly to right became a sacrifice fly that brought Herrera across the plate with the leading run. TJ McFarland took over and retired Michael Siani out, so when Mitch Spence, who was the A’s’ last pitcher of the game, strolled to the mound to open the top of the seventh, the A’s were looking up at a 3-2 St. Louis lead.

Jolo Romero retired the hosts 1,2,3 in the eighth, and Ryan Helsley came through with an equally clean bottom of the ninth to earn his seventh save and second in two days.

This afternoon the Oakland City Council, Oakland Redevelopment Successor Agency, and the Geologic Abatement Board met to discuss the Ballers’ proposal to make $1.6 million of improvements to Raimondi Park. As of this writing, I haven’t heard the outcome of that meeting.

Former St Louis Cardinal manager Whitey Herzog passed away on Tuesday at 92 years old and was honored on the Oakland Coliseum scoreboard before the game. Herzog managed the Cardinals from 1980-1990.

The A’s and the Cardinals will meet again tomorrow, Wednesday, afternoon at 12:37. Paul Blackburn will take his immaculate record of 1-0, 0.00 against Steven Matz’s 1-0, 1.80).