Tag: Los Angeles Angels

The Oakland A’s Sean Murphy (right) gets a forearm bash from teammate Mitch Mooreland (left) after Murphy’s solo homer in the second inning at the Oakland Coliseum on Mon Jun 14, 2021 (AP News photo)

Los Angeles. 5. 14. 1

Oakland. 8. 9. 0

By Lewis Rubman

Monday, June 14, 2021

OAKLAND–Baseball people are fond of saying, “It’s not who you play, but when you play them.”

That certainly was the case for the Athletics as they opened their four game series against the LA Angeles tonight. The Oaklanders, at 40-27, took the field a baker’s dozen games over .500, in first place in the AL West by two games over Dusty Baker’s Double Dirty Dozen by two games.

The Angels, at 33-32, were just hint above the break even point. But both teams were 9-2 (.818) in June, which put them level with Milwaukee for the best mark in the majors so far this month. The green and gold’s hitting has improved, and the team entered the day with a collective BA of .274, which, although probably helped by the threatened crack down on illegal pitches, still is fifth in the league, all of whose hitters received the same boost.

Oakland´s pitching, too, in spite of the sporadic melt downs it’s suffered, has been excellent recently. The rotation entered the fray with the lowest ERA in the majors, 2.32, and the figure for the entire pitching staff is the second best in the league, 2.85.

The team’s run differential had improved from a pre-June minus 11 to a pleasing plus 32 so far this month. On the negative side, the A’s have been outperformed in head to head encounters with their division rivals, against whom they have gone 10-13, but they’ve beaten Los Angeles in six of their 11 meetings so far.

Sean Menaea has been a valuable contributor to Oakland’s recent surge. The 29 year old southpaw gave up a paltry two hits over the 15 innings he had hurled earlier in the month and only two runs on 16 hits in the 16-2/3 innings he pitched over his last four starts, two of which were in Anaheim in games and were no decisions (each team eventually won one them).

He threw 111 pitches in each of his last two starts, a complete game shutout in Seattle on June 2 and six frames of two hit scoreless baseball against Arizona here at the Coliseum a week later. He took the mound with a season’s record of 5-2, 3.09.

Manaea’s opposite number, right hander Dylan Bundy, took some pretty awful numbers, 1-6, 6.16, to be exact, into the game with him. From looking at Bundy’s 2021 numbers you wouldn’t think of him as a top of the rotation kind of guy, but that’s no reason not to take him seriously.

In 2011, he was, at the age of 18, the Orioles’ first round draft choice, the fourth overall. Last year, he finished ninth in the voting for the Cy Young Award in the AL, and teammates voted him the best performing pitcher on the Halos’ staff. He finished that abbreviated season with marks of 6-3, 3.29 .

While neither pitcher was at the top of his game, Bundy’s performance was frankly bad, and Manaea showed grit in holding Los Angeles to one run in his team’s 8- 5 win over the visitors.

It was Juan Lagares, hitting all of .223, who put the Angels ahead in the second inning, driving Manaea’s first pitch to him, a 91 mph sinker, over the right field scoreboard with one out and nobody on. It wasn’t as if Lagares’s round tripper, his first of the year, was the result of a single mistake by the A’s starter.

He had left the bases loaded in the first, and there were runners on the corners when he finally escaped the second without allowing another run. By then, he pitch count was up to 50.

And it was Sean Murphy, giving the lie to his BA of .208, whose seventh homer of the season put the A’s on top. It drove in Mitch Moreland, whose single to left was the thousandth hit of the A’s DH’s career. Murphy’s blast came on an 0-1 89 mph four seamer, clearing the right center field wall at the 388 foot marker.

An inning later, Tony Kemp blasted a double into the right field ccorner with Mark Canha, the human bull’s eye who’d led off the inning getting hit by a pitch, on first. Canha crossed the plate and Kemp reached third when Taylor Ward mishandled the rebound for an error.

Moments later, Olson’s sacrifice fly to right brought in Kemp, Oakland’s second tally of the frame and fourth of the game. A walk to Lowrie and Chapman’s double to left put men on second and third, and Moreland’s 1,001st hit skipped under second baseman David Fletcher’s glove, driving in both runners, giving the A’s a 6-1 advantage and ending Bundy’s short evening’s work.

James Hoyt took over but didn’t take charge. Murphy singled to left, moving Moreland up a base. After Brown forced Murphy at second, Moreland taking third, Elvis Andrus punched a single into right, bringing Moreland home. Canha, in his second plate appearance of the inning, walked to load the bases. At long last, Kemp went down swinging.

Bundy’s ugly line was seven runs, all earned, on five hits, including one hoe run, two walks, and a hit batter. He threw 59 pitches. He was credited with 38 strikes and three strike outs.

His ungainly ERA rose to 6.98, and he left the game on the hook for the loss. Hoyt hung around until he hit Sean Murphy with a pitch to open the home fifth. He was yanked in favor of Alex Claudio, who promptly surrendered a double down the left field line to Chad Pinder, hitting for Brown.

That closed the book on Hoyt, who went 1-2/3 innings and was charged with one run, which was earned, on two hits, two walks, and a hit batter. He also struck out two Athletics. He threw 40 pitches; 18 were balls.

Whenever a team bats around, there’s always a danger that its pitcher will go stale on the bench, especially if he’s been having trouble like that which Manaea had been experiencing. But Manaea, even if he didn’t keep the Angels off the bases in the fourth, kept them off the board, stranding two but not permitting anyone to cross the plate.

He lasted until there were two out in the top of the sixth, when Fletcher lashed his 104th pitch into left for a double. They say you can judge a pitcher by how well he does when he doesn’t have all of his stuff. By that standard, Manaea showed himself an ace. He held the halos to one run on nine hits, including one long ball, and issued only one passport. 40 of his offerings were balls. He deserved the victory that brought his record to 6-2, 2.99.

His replacement, Burch Smith, struck out Justin Upton in the sixth but was ineffective in the seventh, coughing up three runs on three hits, a walk, and a hit batter, getting only two outs. Sergio Romo came in to save his bacon with runners on first and second and a reduced lead of 8-4. But Romo allowed a single to Fletcher, and he was hanging on to a three run advantage when he finally struck Upton out to end the threat.

There was a certain amount of excitement in the A´s half of the seventh, when Junior Guerra, who had relieved Claudio in the sixth, hit Murphy with a pitch to open the frame, balked him to second, and then plunked Pinder before getting Andrus to fly out to right and getting Canha to hit into an around the horn DP.

Jake Diekman held the Angels at bay in the eighth, and after Guerra wiggled out of trouble in the A’s half of the inning, Lou Trivino took over, looking for his 11th save. He got it, setting the halos down in order.

Tomorrow the 15th, it will be Frankie Montas (6-6, 3.47) going against Andrew Heaney (4-3, 4.37) at 6:40.

The Oakland A’s Mark Canha (20) seen here after scoring on a double by Matt Olson against the Los Angeles Angels on Sat May 22, 2021. Canha has a career high of being hit by pitches 64 times most recently by Angels pitcher Shohei Ohtani on Fri May 28, 2021 at the Oakland Coliseum (AP News photo)

On the Oakland A’s podcast with Barbara Mason:

#1 The Oakland A’s just wrapped up their series against the Los Angeles Angels on Sunday but all the talk in this series focused on pitcher Shohei Ohtani who pitch into the seventh innings against the A’s on Friday night at the Oakland Coliseum in game 2 and when went up and inside on A’s batter Mark Canha which nearly started a bench clearing brawl. Disclaimer no punches were thrown.

#2 In Canha’s next at bat he was hit by Ohtani and Ohtani went down on the mound to show Canha no hard feelings and nothing intentional. Ohtani was not tossed out of the game and Canha peacefully took his base. The hit by was Canha’s 64th career.

#3 Kind of a unusual pomp and circumstance on Thursday night when Ohtani was suppose to pitch but arrived late to the ball park saying traffic was so bad on the Bay Bridge that he took BART which he said was late. After checking with BART there were no delays going to the Coliseum from the San Francisco on Thursday afternoon.

#4 The A’s after taking the first two games of the four game series faced Angels pitcher Alex Cobb in game 3 on Saturday. Cobb pitched seven innings of three hit shutout ball against the A’s before being lifted and the A’s who couldn’t Cobb out lost it 4-0. The A’s hit only .209 during the four game series.

#5 The A’s open a three game series in Seattle tonight at T Mobile Field a 1:10 pm Memorial Day first pitch. The last time the A’s and Mariners met back on May 24-26 the Mariners took the series two out of three. The A’s won the third game 6-3 on May 26th A’s pitcher James Kaprielian started and went seven innings and gave up two hits.

Join Barbara each Monday for the A’s podcasts at http://www.sportsradioservice.com

Los Angeles Angels starter Alex Cobbs delivers a pitch against the Oakland A’s in the first inning at the Oakland Coliseum Sat May 29, 2021 in game three of the four game series (AP News photo)

Los Angeles (AL) 4- 9 – 0

Oakland 0 – 3 – 1

By Lewis Rubman

Sat May 29, 2021

OAKLAND– Two of the question marks about the A’s had about their rotation when they returned home from Anaheim on the 27th have been changed to exclamation points after Wednesday night’s masterly complete game shut out of the Angels by Chris Bassett and last night’s stellar 6-2/3 inning gutsy showing against them by Sean Manea. This afternoon we had a chance to see if Frankie Montás would continue this trend of improvement. He almost did.

The bullpen, however, remains unsettled. Perhaps because of the extra day´s rest Bassett´s route going performance gave them, the A’s relievers (at least the two of them who saw action last night) were sharp and effective over 2-1/3 innings.

Nonetheless, it’s a matter of concen that, while the Athletics’s relief corps converted 12 saves out of 13 opportunities and compiled an ERA of 2.32 in the team’s first 29 games in spite of the season opening six game losing streak, in the pen’s last 13 games, it has earned only two saves while blowing four.

During that time, its ERA has been a whopping 6.56 and opposing teams have ganged up on it for a BA of .285. This afternoon, the pen’s performance was excellent.

Oakland intends to activate Jesús Luzardo tomorrow. So, there does seem to be hope in the pitching department.

Ramón Laureano was missing from the starting line up for the second straight game, due to a pulled groin that has him day to day.

Although the Angel’s starter, Alex Cobb is new to the Halos this year, he has nine years of big league experience with Tampa Bay and Baltimore. The basic numbers for this season that he brought to the mound this afternoon, 2-2, 4.78, are pretty much in line with his totals for those nine previous years, 55-57, 3.88, taking into account the violentswings in ERAs that are prevalent this early in the season. He pitched brillantly today.

Slopppy play by the Oakland battery enabled the Angels to fly ahead in the top of the fifth. Rojas led off with a walk. He advanced to second on a wild pitch during Anthony Bemboon´s at bat. Bemboon singled to right, sending Rojas to third.

David Fletcher bunted towards first, making hard enough contact to enable Olson to charge down the line, field the ball cleanly, and flip it like a frisibee in time for Aramis García, who was waiting at home, to tag Rojas. Only he didn’t tag him.

The ball bounced off the catcher’s mitt, Rojas scored, and Bemboom reached second. The play was ruled a fielder’s choice with an error charged to García. After Justin Upton flew out to left for the second out, Ohtani, who had yet to get a hit in the series, came to the plate. Before he could do anything, Montás unleashed a wild pitch that scored Bemboon and allowed Fletcher to reach second.

Then Ohtani lined a single to left that drove in Fletcher. He proceeded to steal second on a pitchso far outside that García made a nice play merely to catch it. Rendon’s single to right drove in Ohtani with the Halos’ fourth unearned run of the frame. Things were beginning to look like a mirror image of Wednesday´s game between these two teams.

Montás was pitching a nice comeback inning in the sixth, having struck out Lagares and Rojas, when Kean Wong´s double off the right center field wall drove him out of the box. Cam Bedrosian replaced him for the next inning and a third.

Montás had thrown 98 pitches, 68 of them strikes. 10% of the remaining 30 were wild pitches. He’d gone 5-2/3 innings and allowed four runs, none of which was earned, on six hits. He walked only one batter, but that was offset by his three wild pitches. He notched seven Ks.

Deolis Guerra took over for Montás to start the eighth and stayed on for an inning and a third, leaving in the top of the ninth with a runner on first after having struck out two Angels and yielded a walk and a hit but no runs. That was because Sergio Romo stranded Fletcher, who had gotten the hit, at first, striking out Upton and getting Ohtani to foul out to third. Ohtani, by the way, went 2 for 5 for the day.

Cobb had pitched a terrific game for Los Angeles before being lifted after seven innings, replaced by southpaw Tony Watson. The veteran starter had shut the Athletics out on three hits and wo walks. He struck out eight. He did this on 101 pitches, 58 strikes. For the ninth, Raisel Iglesias took over for Watson, who had retired the A’s in order in his one inning of work, and did the same in his.

The series and the homestand will end tomrrow. The Athletics plan to pitch Cole Irvin (3-6, 3.92) against José Quintana (0-3, 7.92), both of them southpaws.