A’s hope September success against Astros can carry over
The A’s have reason to be optimistic about their chances to win the American League Division Series with the Houston Astros at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles this week.
The last time the A’s prepared for a series with their current biggest rival, though, the outlook may not have been quite as rosy.
The A’s season was put on hold in early September after pitcher Daniel Mengden tested positive for the coronavirus. They then lost two of three games to San Diego after their season resumed, and their lead in the American League West was 31/2 games. To boot, Matt Chapman, their best player, was lost for the season after a Sept. 6 hip injury.
Then the A’s played a fivegame series with the Houston Astros from Sept. 7-10, and kept their season on the rails.
Oakland won four of five games from Houston at the Coliseum — including three by two runs or less — to all but clinch the AL West title.
“I wouldn’t say it was a turning point necessarily,” A’s infielder Tommy La Stella said of the series. “This team had played well the entire season and was in first place at the time.”
Still, after Oakland won two of the first three games, the fourth game no doubt provided the A’s with a huge emotional lift.
On Sept. 9, Jesús Luzardo had seven strikeouts over seven innings, and Ramón Laureano’s walk-off single in the ninth gave the A’s a 3-2 victory to move a season-high 51/2 games up on the Astros. Oakland won the series finale 3-1, as Sean Manaea allowed one earned run over seven innings.
The A’s had a team ERA of 1.98 over 41 innings. The A’s struck out an average of 8.7 times per game this season, but cut that back to five per game in their series vs. Houston.
Jake Lamb was signed by the A’s to shore up third base on Sept. 14. But in the meantime, winning that series in the second week of September gave the A’s some reassurance that things would be OK, even without an important piece like Chapman.
“Obviously Chapman for us is a huge loss,” A’s manager Bob Melvin said. “You just feel his presence in the clubhouse as well as his presence on the field. He’s a leader. We’ve been able to patch it together, and we bring in Jake, who’s been fantastic.
“But maybe there is something to that, that we played Houston right after that and we were able to win the series. We probably felt like after that, somehow we can manage around it and still win games without him.”
The A’s went 9-9 down the stretch after the Astros series, and captured the division by seven games.
For the season, the A’s won seven of 10 games with the Astros, with the three losses coming in seven-inning games as part of doubleheaders. Still, the Astros’ lineup is as healthy as now as it’s been all season, with José Altuve and Alex Bregman both back to normal after stints on the injured list last month.
NO CHAPMAN IN BUBBLE >> Chapman will not be able to be with his teammates inside the A’s bubble in Los Angeles, Melvin said. Chapman was in Colorado for two weeks to recuperate and begin his rehabilitation after he had hip surgery Sept. 14. He makes his offseason home in Southern California, where he is continuing to rehab.
The A’s entered their bubble just days before the end of the regular season.
“The people that you have right now that quarantined for a period of time here, and are part of our bubble, that’s the only people that can be in it, unfortunately,” Melvin said. “He’s also started his rehab and you don’t want to cut too much into that.
“In a normal season, we’d definitely find a way to get him in there with us. That’s just not the case, unfortunately, with the circumstance now.”
Chapman’s recovery time from surgery, which involved repairing a torn right hip labrum and cleaning the femoral head, was expected to be about four months. BIGGER ROLE FOR DAVIS? >> DH Khris Davis might not play every game of the ALDS, but it doesn’t appear as if his only opportunities to hit against the Astros will come against left-handed pitching.
Even though the White Sox started righty Dane Dunning in Game 3 of the wild-card series, Davis was in the lineup. Dunning was taken out after two-thirds of an inning, but Davis remained in the lineup and went 1 for 5 with a strikeout.
In the A’s 5-3 win in Game 2 over the White Sox lefty starter Dallas Keuchel, Davis hit a solo home run in the fourth. In 11 regular-season games in September, Davis hit .296 with an .894 OPS, two homers and five doubles.