Oakland victory party includes baseball win
Frankie Montas was greeted by a rousing standing ovation as he strolled to the dugout with two outs in the eighth inning Friday night.
Remarkably, that was a distant second for the most raucous cheer offered by the crowd of more than 10,000 at the Coliseum, which basically acted as the backdrop to the Warriors’ championship celebration.
Between the top and bottom half of the sixth inning, the public-address announcer shouted the final score of Game 4 of the NBA Finals, prompting a loud and extended “Warriors” chant. About 30 minutes later, the Warriors’ watch party spilled out of Oracle Arena and started a dance party that could be all the way inside the Coliseum.
It was another 90 minutes before the A’s fans joined in the parking lot fun, but they were able to bring some good news of their own: a 7-2 victory over the Royals that pushed the A’s two games over .500.
The A’s got production up and down their lineup, including two home runs by Khris Davis, to back up another sterling start from Montas, and the Oakland bullpen closed the door.
Montas went 72⁄3 innings and kept Kansas City scoreless until a two-run home run by Mike Moustakas ended his night with the A’s leading by four runs. Using a steady dose of sinkers that allowed him to pitch around six hits and a walk, Montas moved his record to 3-0 since making his first A’s start May 27.
“I know last year that he had some control stuff going on, but I haven’t seen it,” catcher Jonathan Lucroy said. “… He’s effectively wild in the zone. He’s not going to paint with every pitch, but he’s throwing mid- to upper-90s with sink or run. It’s very unpredictable.
“I don’t know what it’s going to do, and if I don’t, the hitter definitely doesn’t.”
Montas got plenty of backing, too. Davis homered in the first and fourth innings, sandwiched around a solo shot by Dustin Fowler in the third.
Davis’ first-inning line drive might have knocked down the right-center-field wall, if it hadn’t cleared it. In the fourth, he popped a hanging curveball over the center-field wall.
“We’ve seen him do some great things, but everyone in our dugout was amazed on that one,” A’s manager Bob Melvin said of Davis’ first-inning homer. “When it took off off the bat, it just looked like a line drive. Anybody else, it’s probably a two-hopper to the wall and a double. This thing goes out. It’s spectacular power.”
The A’s pounded out three more hits in the fourth inning, including Lucroy’s single up the middle that scored Matt Chapman. They piled on in the sixth inning, when Lucroy’s double down the left-field line pushed the lead to 6-0.
After the Royals trimmed the deficit to 6-2 on Moustakas’ eighth-inning homer, the A’s tacked on an insurance run. Marcus Semien scorched a one-out triple over the head of center fielder Paulo Orlando. Semien, who scored on Stephen Piscotty’s grounder to short, had three hits and scored twice.
“When you’ve got a guy like Jonathan Lucroy hitting eighth or ninth, a guy who’s had a nice little career swinging the bat, we have a good feeling that every inning we’ve got a chance to score,” Melvin said. “… When a pitcher tries to take a little breath toward the bottom of our lineup, we can get you there, too.”