Minnesota Twins centerfielder Michael A Taylor watches the ball take a bounce off the centerfield fence for a double for Oakland A’s Zack Gelof in the bottom of the third inning at the Oakland Coliseum on Fri Jul 14, 2023 (AP News photo)
Minnesota (46-46). 200 100 002 – 5 10 0
Oakland (25-68). 012 000 001 – 4. 7. 0
Time: 3:28
Attendance: 7,923
Friday, July 14, 2023
By Lewis Rubman
OAKLAND–If it looks like a done deal that the A’s will be moving to Las Vegas (although I’d be interested to see what sort of odds the casinos are offering), it’s beginning to look like a sure thing that the Las Vegas Aviators are moving to Oakland.
Today’s new inhabitants of the crumbling edifice by the Nimitz were Tyler Soderstrom and Zach Gelof. The former can catch and play first base as well as, of course, serving as a DH. He was hitting .254 with 20 homers and 59 RBI in his 69 games in the hitter friendly PCL. MLB.com considers him the Athletics’ top prospect.
The latter is listed as number three. whose brother Jake was the Dodgers’ second round pick in this year’s draft, was hitting .304 with a dozen dingers and 44 RBI for the Aviators. The A’s also recalled right handed pitcher, who recently was reinstated from the injured list and sent to Vegas. Both position players were in Oakland’s starting lineup.
Soderstrom went 0 for 3, while Gelof was 1 for 4 with an RBI double. The final score was 5-4,k Minnesota.
Southpaw Ken Waldichuk, coming to work at 2-6,6.63 , was the starting pitcher for the home town team. His last two appearances was as an opener, His last conventional start , on May 19 at Houston, lasted only five innings, in which he surrendered four runs, three of them earned, on five hits in a 5-1 loss to the Astros.
Friday night, Waldichuk lasted only 3-2/3 innings and allowed three runs, all earned but one posthumous, on three hits and two walks. He struck out five and saw his ERA rise slightly, to 6.66 in a no decision. He threw 74 pitches in his short stint; 47 counted as strikes.
The Twins sent the veteran Kenta Maeda to the hill (61-46,3.93 lifetime in MLB and 2-5, 5.18 this year at game time), and his performance confirmed that he was over the hill. He threw 80 pitches (52 for strikes) in only three innings, during which he yielded three runs, all earned, on four hits and an equal number of walks, notching six strikeouts in the process. The no decision left him at 2-5 but raised his earned run average to 5.50)
It took one pitch for the Twins to put a man in scoring position with Carlos Correa’s double off the scoreboard above the Eva Air advertisement in right to start the game. One more pitch and The Curse of the Leadoff Double had dissipated; Donovan Sullivan sent an RBI single into right. He scored on Kyle Farmers’s triple, giving the Twin Cities’ squad a 2-0 lead to play with.
The A’s got one of those runs with two down in the bottom of the second. Shea Langeliers made amends for his first inning passed ball, which hadn’t affected the scoring, with a triple off the right fence. Nick Allen followed that up with a solid single to right. In spite of Allen’s theft of second and a walk to Ryan Noda, that was all the A’s could score in the frame.
Gelof’s first big league hit, a double that bounced off the fence above the Coca-Cola ad and beneath the one for State Farm in right center, tied the game in the next inning, bringing in Brent Rooker, who’d beaten out a single to short and advanced on a walk to Seth Brown. Brown went to third on the two bagger and scored on Jace Peterson’s sac fly to left center. giving the A’s a 3-2 lead.
Waldichuk almost got through the top of the fourth, but his wildness (he walked two batters) and catcher Christian Vásquez’s speed (he beat out the relay on a potentially inning ending double play attempt) combined to allow the tying run and caused the starter’s removal from the game. Austin Pruitt allowed the inherited Farmer, who’d led off the frame with a walk , to score on pinch hitter Eduard Juien’s double to left.
Maeda didn’t come out for the home fourth; Emilio Pagán did. He retired the A’s in order.
Angel Felipe entered the game, making his second appearance since joining the A’s on July 7. He struggled but, with a little help from Sam Long for the third out, kept Minnesota off the board in the fifth.
Jordan Balazovic came in to fan Gelof, which shut the A’s down after Pagán’s two out walk of Sodertrom in the home fifth.
Long got Vásquez to foul out to first at the start of the sixth, but a single and a walk later. he was gone in favor of Lucas Erceg. He caught Correa looking at a third strike before walking Solano to load the bases and then ended the threat with a called third strike on Buxton.
Jovani Morán replaced Balazovic and administered The Curse of the Leadoff Double to the A’s, stranding Peterson, who’d dumped the fatidic two bagger just inside the left field foul line, on third with two down.
Sam Moll pitched the top of the eighth and faced only three Twins, sandwiching a strikeout of Julien between singles by Vásquez and Kepler. Shintaro Fujinami took Moll’s place on the mound. He came through, getting Correa to ground into a 4-6-3 twin killing, Gelof to Allen to Noda.
Griffin Jax, retired A’s in to a conga beat in their half of the eighth.
Fujinami came out for the ninth and was greeted with a leadoff double by Solano. Buxton then was awarded first on catcher’s interference, but home plate umpire Nic Lentz’s call was overturned on review. Buxton ended up striking out; the second strike being the foul that had been catcher’s interference.
Joey Gallo long has had the reputation of being an all or nothing hitter. He struck out as a pinch hitter in the seventh. He homered to right as a left fielder in the ninth. His 16th four bagger of the year raised his batting average from .185 to .189 and put the Twinkies ahead, 5-3.
The Athletics now needed to score two runs off closer Johan Durán to tie. Langeliers grounded out to second. Tony Kemp sent a pinch hit double just inside the right field foul line. After Noda flew out to left, JJ Beday was Oakland’s last hope. He drove a 2-2 pitch into center for a single, and it was 5-4.
The next batter was Rooker, the A’s all star, who had been greeted in Seattle by chants of “Sell the team.” At this at bat, the chants were “Let’s go, Oakland.” He was hit by a pitch, which brought Seth Brown to the plate. He grounded out to second.
The win went to Jax, now 5-6, 2.84. Durán earned his 13th save. The losing pitcher was Fujinori, now 5-8, 9.06.
The loss puts the A’s at 25-68, .268. Kansas City’s game for today was postponed, leaving the Royals at 26-85, 2.86. On this day in 1899, the Cleveland Spiders were trounced by the Baltimore Orioles, 14-1 in front of 1,174 paying spectators, giving the Spiders a record of 12-60, 1.67 on their way to season’s mark of 20-134, .130, the worst in major league history.
The 1962 Mets, whose 40-120, .250 holds the record for worst in the modern day major leagues, went down 17-3 to Los Angeles in newly completed Dodger Stadium, with a paid attendance of 37,253.
Saturday’s game, in the 55 year old Oakland Coliseum, is set for a 4:07 start and will feature Hogan Harris (2-3, 6.07) on the mound for the A’s and Pablo López (5-5, 3.89) hurling for Minnesota.
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