Triggs helps erase memory of collapse
ANAHEIM — After blowing a six-run lead the night before, the A’s needed reliable pitching and defense Saturday to get rid of the stench of that collapse.
Andrew Triggs, as he tends to do against the Angels, answered the call, with 51⁄3 solid innings, and the A’s played error-free in a 7-3 victory at Angel Stadium.
“Every time I go out there, I want to do as much as possible to put us in a position to win,” Triggs said. “But yeah, after a game like (Friday), which is a tough one, you’ve got to reset.”
While Oakland didn’t duplicate Friday’s five-homer effort, the team drew a season-high 10 walks, which might be an even more encouraging sign for the offense. The A’s have 40 walks for the season, averaging four per game, putting them among the league leaders, and over the past four games Oakland has scored 25 runs.
Triggs, who had allowed a total of two earned runs in his previous three career starts against the Angels, was stingy again, giving up only a two-run homer by Justin Upton in the fourth. Triggs allowed four hits, he walked two and struck out six, including Mike Trout twice. He also got Trout to hit into a double play; the two-time MVP struck out three times in all and is batting .184 through nine games.
Oakland’s bullpen, which gave up eight runs the previous night (three earned), allowed just one Saturday, when Luis Valbuena knocked a homer off Ryan Buchter in the seventh, the first earned run off the lefty since Sept. 11. Closer Blake Treinen, brought in in the seventh inning Friday, took over in the eighth Saturday and threw two scoreless innings, working around singles by Albert Pujols and Kole Calhoun in the ninth.
“To get a win like this means a lot,” said Treinen, who took the loss Friday despite getting what should have been an inning-ending grounder, adding that Friday night “left a pretty sour taste in everyone’s mouth.”
The A’s jumped out early again. Matt Chapman walked in the second, and with two outs Stephen Piscotty doubled him in. JC Ramirez also walked Jake Smolinski and Matt Joyce (for the second time), and Marcus Semien rapped a single up the middle to send in two more.
In the fifth, Jed Lowrie blasted his second homer of the series, a solo shot, and in the eighth Matt Olson walked and Chapman hit a drive to left that Upton lost in the lights. Olson scored and Chapman wound up with a triple, then came in on a hit by Bruce Maxwell.
“We needed to win that game,” manager Bob Melvin said. “Defensively, pitching, it was a well-played game all around.”
Before the game, Trayce Thompson, brother of the Warriors’ Klay Thompson, arrived in Oakland’s clubhouse. The outfielder will provide the A’s an extra bat with an interleague series against the Dodgers coming up in Los Angeles, but there’s a chance the team will put him on the waiver wire again in 10 days.
“I’ve been in this position before,” he said. “It’s definitely a roller coaster of a game, especially for me the last few years. But I’ve been in this role before, I know what it takes and I’m just going to prepare to the best of my abilities and show up to play every day.”
If Thompson sticks around, he’ll live in the area with Klay and their older brother, Mychel.
“This will be the first time I stay with them since high school, so it’ll probably feel a lot like high school — him going to basketball practice, me going to baseball . ... They’ll kind of respect my boundaries. I’ll probably have to lay down the law in the house.”