WHAT A RELIEF
Bullpen comes up big as A’s rally to win and advance to AL Division Series against Astros
OAKLAND >> The A’s took the Chicago White Sox’s best punch and didn’t flinch. Oakland overcame a tape-measure home run and a threerun deficit to advance to the American League Division Series for the first time since 2013 with a 6- 4 win Thursday in Game 3 of their wildcard series.
They’ll play their division foe, the Houston Astros, next week after winning their first winner-takeall game since Game 7 of the 1973 World Series against the New York Mets.
The weight of decades of do-or-die failures didn’t crush this A’s team. The young core has been together long enough to sew their own tight bonds and long-term goals after wild-card defeats in 2018 and 2019.
“Not everybody has been part of all that,” manager Bob Melvin said of the broken streak. “We’ve had some tough ones in the last two years, but the gold issue was to win the division and try to get the first round off and get to a series. We got to a series, lost the first game, and really responded well. It was rewarding obviously.”
Because of the pandemic, teams aren’t allowed to celebrate with champagne
showers. The A’s could have used a little bubbly during this season, which included a loss in Game 1 — when Oakland didn’t even get a runner on base until the seventh inning — and then two gutty wins to advance.
“Getting that opportunity after that first game to come back and redeem ourselves, that shows the spirit we have and ability to bounce back no matter what happens,” Hendriks said.
With no champagne or beer shower, the A’s celebrated by playing a game together. Last year, the A’s stayed loose by playing basketball in the clubhouse. This year they rejoiced in a round of puttputt golf.
After throwing 19 pitches to save the win Thursday, closer Liam Hendriks had other plans for celebration.
“I need a nap,” he said.
It had been quite a roller coaster 24 hours for the A’s dominant closer. He entered the ninth inning Thursday trying to redeem himself after a 49-pitch outing Wednesday in which he nearly blew a five-run lead. Melvin let him have the eighth inning in Game 2 so he could tackle the heart of Chicago’s order, as well as get in longawaited work. The plan nearly went south, and Hendriks wasn’t sure if he should pitch Thursday with the game on the line.
An inspiring bullpen session assured him he’d be OK, and he went on to strike out the side after a leadoff single.
“I was happy I was able to rein it in a little bit and make my pitches,” he said.
The grass between the bullpens and the mound was shredded to nubs Thursday. Between both teams, 17 pitchers were used to get through nine innings.
The White Sox rotated through nine of them. Manager Rick Renteria went to his bullpen extremely early, pulling starter Dane Dunning with two outs in the first inning after he allowed a pair of hits.
“We talked about it after the game,” infielder Chad Pinder said. “Typically we don’t do well in those bullpen situations. Their bullpen is an incredible bunch. And I think that just going into the series, the preparation we did on their bullpen, knowing what their go-to pitches were and working counts and not giving away at-bats, I give credit that our lineup could stick it out today.”
The A’s have a tendency to struggle while adjusting to new pitchers. Against a White Sox bullpen riddled with hard-throwing rookies, the A’s hitters were at their best.
Down 3-0 in the fourth inning, the A’s forced a seismic shift in momentum. Sean Murphy barreled up Codi Heuer for a two-run home run.
“Pulling within one, I had gotten into the bullpen and the bullpen was rocking,” Hendriks said.
It was Murphy’s eighth home run of the year, and the 424-foot blast was nowhere near his longest. He hit one 464 feet in Texas.
Renteria pulled Heuer and opted for left-hander Carlos Rodón to face Tommy La Stella, who worked a walk. Marcus Semien followed with a single and Renteria intentionally walked Pinder — who subbed in for Jake Lamb at third — to get to Mark Canha and to load the bases.
Canha and Olson worked backto-back bases-loaded walks to give the A’s a 4-3 lead, which the White Sox erased in the top of the fifth before Oakland struck again, using the White Sox’s mistakes against them.
The A’s got something going against Chicago reliever Evan Marshall in the fifth. The right-hander couldn’t quite find the strike zone, and the three-batter minimum rule gave the A’s full chance to take the lead. With two outs, Marshall walked a pair and La Stella reached on a catcher’s interference.
Pinder came up with the big hit, slicing a ball past Anderson’s glove at short to score two and give the A’s a lead they wouldn’t surrender. It was a moment that nearly didn’t come to fruition, as Pinder worked back from a mid-September hamstring strain with extra sting in light of Matt Chapman’s seasonending hip surgery.
It seemed appropriate that the A’s strongest asset — their bullpen — played the most essential role in the club’s biggest game yet.
Consistent throughout, the bullpen kept the A’s afloat this year with a league-best 2.72 ERA in the regular season. When starter Mike Fiers couldn’t escape the second inning, the bullpen tamped down the White Sox just enough to pave the way for a win.
The White Sox were all over Fiers’ high-80s fastball, and Rookie of the Year candidate Luis Robert got his barrel on a second-inning fastball. He launched it 487 feet into the left-field bleachers for Chicago’s first run, an indication that the bullpen would be called upon early.
Yusmeiro Petit escaped a secondinning jam but was squared up in the third when Chicago knocked back-to-back-to-back hits for a pair of runs.
Of all seven relievers Melvin called from the bullpen, Frankie Montas was perhaps the most pivotal. Montas could have been an ideal starter for this do-or-die game. But the right-hander struggled to find his mechanics and confidence this year until his last start Sunday, when he threw 113 pitches, eliminating him from consideration as a starter.
Montas is durable and looked fine in his relief appearance, painting 97 mph fastballs with a splitter and slider. He allowed the tying run in the fifth, though, and was pulled after throwing 34 pitches in two innings. But he got the win.
JB Wendelken, Lou Trivino, Jake Diekman and Joakim Soria bobbed and weaved through traffic for three scoreless innings before Hendriks’ heroics.