Tag: Oakland A’s

Oakland A’s Esteury Ruiz slugged a two run homer in the bottom of the third inning against the St Louis Cardinals to help pace Oakland to a three run 6-3 victory over the Cardinals at the Oakland Coliseum on Wed Apr 17, 2024 (AP News photo)

By Jerry Feitelberg

OAKLAND–The A’s beat the visiting St. Louis Cardinals 6-3 on getaway day. The A’s sent Paul Blackburn to the hill Wednesday afternoon. Blackburn had not allowed a run in 19 and 1/3rd innings to start the season. Blackburn added three more innings to his record, holding the Cardinals scoreless for the first three innings.

The Cardinals plated three runs in the fourth to snap his streak. The A’s rallied in the fifth to regain the lead. The A’s bullpen did not allow a hit or a walk after taking over for Blackburn with two out in the sixth. The A’s won the game 6-3.

The A’s drew first blood in the bottom of the third. The Cardinals’ starter, lefty Steven Matz, walked rookie Max Schuemann to start the inning. A’s centerfielder, Esteury Ruiz, lined a shot over the left field wall to give the A’s an early 2-0 lead. It was Ruiz’s second big fly of the young season.

The Cardinal offense ignited in the top of the fourth, setting the stage for an exciting comeback. Lars Nootbaar led the charge with a single, followed by a single from Nolan Arenado, sending Nootbar to third. Cardinals’ DH Willson Contreras doubled, driving in Nootbar, and Arenado stopped at third. Blackburn struck out Nolan Gorman for the first out. Catcher Ivan Herrera added a single to drive in Arenado and Contreras to the excitement. The Cardinals surged ahead, leading 3-2 midway through the third inning.

The A’s demonstrated their resilience and strategic play in the bottom of the fifth, reclaiming the lead. Singles by Tyler Nevin and Zack Gelof set the stage, putting men on first and second with no outs. A’s catcher Shea Langeliers showcased his strategic thinking with a ground-rule double to drive in Nevin. Gelof would have scored, but the ball got stuck under the wall in center field.

Gelof had to go back to third. Abraham Toro’s ground out allowed Gelof to score, and Langeliers scored on a sacrifice fly, solidifying the A’s lead at 5-3 in favor of Oakland.

The A’s added another run in the bottom of the sixth. With two out, Ruiz reached on a fielder’s choice and stole second. A’s right fielder Tyler Nevin singled to drive in Ruiz with the sixth run of the game. The A’s led 6-3 after six.

The A’s bullpen did not allow a hit after starter Paul Blackburn exited in the sixth inning. The A’s win 6-3.

“The job our bullpen did again today [is] a reflection of the season so far,” said Manager Mark Kotsay. “Overall, [it] was a really solid day for our pitching staff.”

Game notes: With the win, the A’s are 8-11. The A’s are 7-4 after a 1-7 start. The Cardinals fall to 9-10.

Paul Blackburn was the winning pitcher. He is now 2-0 for the year. His line was five and 2/3rds innings, allowing three runs and six hits. Cardinals starter Steven Matz was the losing pitcher. His record is 1-1.

“It was kinda one of those days where [I] didn’t really have anything, I felt like,” said Blackburn. “[However], I kept the boys in it, the offense came through, and we were able to get a win. Anytime you get a win, it’s a good outing.”

“Overall, he managed the game as Paul does,” said Kotsay. “Ultimately, he gave us a chance to win, like he’s done all season. He grinded it in that last inning to get through it.”

The Line score for Oakland was six runs, ten hits, and no errors. The Line score for St. Louis was three runs, six hits, and no errors.

Oakland’s hitting stars were Ruiz, Nevin, and Langeliers. Ruiz blasted a 412-foot home run in the third to give the A’s a 2-0 lead. Nevin had a double and two singles. Langeliers’ double helped the A’s score three runs in the fifth.

The A’s used four relievers: T.J. McFarland, Austin Adams, Lucas Erceg, and Mason Miller. Miller earned his fourth save of the season.

The time of the game was two hours and 30 minutes, and 9,551 fans watched the Green and Gold pick up their eighth win.

“We’re playing great baseball right now,” said Blackburn. “The energy has been I think at [an] all-time high right now for us. It’s not just coming from guys [playing every day]. It’s coming guys that are on the bench…..it’s coming from everyone. It’s definitely a group effort right now, and it shows. The come-from-behind wins that we’ve had this year, it gives us a lot of confidence moving forward. [When] we do get down, it’s not like we don’t have a chance. We’re fighting out every at-bat, we’ve thrown the ball well, we[‘ve] hit the ball well and [we’ve played] good defense. We’re playing some really good baseball right now.” 

“I haven’t been here too long, but [there] doesn’t seem to be any egos,” said Nevin. 

The A’s are off on Thursday as they are on their way to play the Cleveland Guardians in Cleveland for three games starting Friday night. Joe Boyle (1-2, 5.68) will pitch for Oakland. Triston, McKemzie (1-2, 6.23) will be on the mound for Cleveland. The game will start at 4:10 pm.

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).

Oakland A’s rightfielder Lawrence Butler (4) makes a dive to catch the baseball in the top of the fourth inning St Louis Cardinals Jordan Walker’s fly ball at the Oakland Coliseum on Mon Apr 15, 2024 (AP News photo)

Monday, April 15, 2024

St. Louis (8-9). 100 002 000. 3. 8. 0

Athletics (7-10). 000 000 010. 1. 5. 0

Time: 2:19

Attendance: 5,508

By Lewis Rubman

OAKLAND–A cursory glance at the roster of Monday night’s visitors, the St. Louis Cardinals, reminds you of the historical connection between baseball in the Gateway City and the game in city and town by the Golden Gate. The Cardinals got good pitching and two runs in the sixth inning to defeat the Oakland A’s 3-1 at the Oakland Coliseum.

Sonny Gray, starting for the Redbirds, threw his first big league pitch on July 10, 2013, for the Oakland Athletics, who had chosen him in the first round of the 2011 draft. Exactly one month later, he chalked up his first win in the show. 2014 was his first full season.

That year he logged 183 strikeouts, was named American League pitcher of the month in April and again in July, and threw a complete game shutout of the Rangers to clinch a playoff spot for the A’s. In the season’s opener the next year, Gray picked up where he had left off, holding the Rangers scoreless with only one hit and a walk over eight innings, in which he threw an economical 98 pitches.

A year and a half laer, at the 2017 trade deadline, Oakland sent him to the Bronx and some international bonus slot cash considerations. In return, the Athletics received Dustin Foster, James Kaprielian, and Jorge Mateo.

It was the first trading deadline deal that Oakland consummated under the presidency of David Kaval. Gray’s entry in the Cardinals’ media guide occupies five pages. Another Bay Area favorite in that publication, Brandon Crawford gets six pages. It almost seems as if the two metropolitan regions had a sister cities exchange program. Think of Tony LaRussa. Think of Dave Duncan. Think of Mark McGuire.

Ross Strippling, the Athletics’ starter, has been a travelling man. The A’s are the fourth major league team he’s pitched for in his 7+ years in the show. He took the mound with a 1-3, 5.48 record against St. Louis, and was 0-3, 5.50 in his three previous starts this season.

Monday night, he lasted 5-2/3 innings, in which he gave up three runs, all of which were earned, although one of them was posthumous, allowing half a dozen hits and a pair of free passes. He struck out three, and 67 of his 101 offerings went into the book as strikes . He was the losing pitcher and now has a slate of 0-4, 5.32).

Shortly before play began, the A’s announced that JD Davis had been placed on the 10 day injured list and that the speedy Esteury Ruíz, whose recent demotion had been strongly criticized, had been recalled from their triple A Las Vegas affiliate. His brief appearance in the eighth was your A’s highlight for tonight.

St. Louis and the team from a city to be determined later began the evening with identical records of 7-9. This was unremarkable for the Cards, since they had finished 2023 at 71-90, it signified that the A’s were on a roll. For one thing, after last year’s horrendous 50-112 anything would be an improvement.

For another, the A’s had won six of their previous eight encounters. That’s impressive, even if the last two of those victories came over the lowly Washington Nationals. The green and gold’s performance on the field probably will afford their fans plenty of aggravation this year, but the 2024 version of the squad is no joke. Tonight, they were outplayed, or better, outpitched, but they performed respectably.

A base on balls to Paul Goldschidt, Lars Nootbaar’s sacrifice to the mound, and a single to left by Nolan Arenado got the Cardinals off to a jump start in the first. Things stayed that way until the top of the sixth. Nootbaar defied The Curse of the Leadoff Double by scoring on a one out double to left by Wilson Contreras. A ground out and walk later, Michael Kelly relieved Stripling, and Jordan Walker singled to put the Cards up, 3-0.

Gray turned in another shutout inning in the sixth and then retired for the evening, giving way to Andrew Kittridge. The veteran had needed only 72 pitches (50 for strikes) to complete those six innings, in which the total damage the A’s inflicted on him came to four hits. He earned the win and now can boast of a perfect 2-0, 0.00 record until his next start.

Kittredge pitched a perfect seventh and was succeeded by Jojo Romero for the eighth. The newly recalled Ruíz pinch hit for Lawrence Butler, took a slider for a strike and then took an 85mph change of pace 405 feet deep, into the left centerfield seats for his first dinger of the year. The Athletics now trailed, 3-1. The game was in reach.

Austin Adams kept the Cards off the board in the top of the ninth in spite of a single, a sacrifice, and a passed ball that put a runner on third with two down.

The Redbirds’ Ryan Helsley earned his sixth save of the year with a 1,2,3 bottom of the ninth. That’s 75% of his team’s wins that the righty reliever has saved.

Monday was Jackie Robinson Day, and everyone wore number 42. This is supposed to be a tribute to a courageous and complex man, to whom all of us owe a great debt. But the idea that Monday—or any other day—we’re all Jackie Robinsons diminishes his stature, It also makes it hard to tell who is doing what to whom on the field, but it’s good for the corporate image of the baseball cartel.

Tuesday, at 6:40 Lance Lynn (0-0, 2.63) will toe the rubber against the Athletics, who will send JP Sears (1-1.5.17)