Dereck Rodriguez’s strong start leads Giants to win over A’s.
Rodriguez, Jones deliver as S.F. wins in Oakland
The two shrewdest recent additions to Bay Area rotations faced each other Friday night at the Coliseum, and veteran Edwin Jackson (A’s) and rookie Dereck Rodriguez (Giants) continued their stingy ways.
Jackson, signed to a minorleague deal June 6, turned in yet another quality start for Oakland, but Rodriguez outpitched him in the Giants’ 5-1 victory.
Infielder Ryder Jones, filling in while Brandon Belt was on a likely one-game paternity leave, provided the deciding blow off Jackson, a homer off the foul pole in right in the fifth inning, and Pablo Sandoval added a solo shot in the seventh to end Jackson’s night.
Rodriguez signed a minorleague deal with the Giants in November, and the team has won the past seven games in which the right-hander has appeared, including six starts. Friday, he worked 61⁄3 innings and gave up one run and three hits, walked none and struck out five while hitting two men.
“That was just a good job by Rodriguez,” Jackson said.
“Sometimes you have to give the opposing pitcher the headline. He came out and pitched well, kept a great team off balance. His record shows the stuff he has, he has a good sense of what he’s doing out there.”
Jones saw Rodriguez pitch in Triple-A early this season and was impressed.
“He’s super-confident,” Jones said. “He throws strikes. He’s one of those guys, when he’s on the mound he feels like he can get every hitter out. We feed off it.”
In a similar vein, Jackson hadn’t given up more than two runs in a start with Oakland before Friday. The Giants got their first in the fourth. Andrew McCutchen provided the first hit off Jackson, a one-out double, and, with two outs, Buster Posey, fresh off a cortisone shot Sunday for his sore right hip, swatted an RBI single to center. Posey said he definitely felt better after the shot.
Sandoval’s homer to right was the third and final run off Jackson, who had allowed just two homers in his first four outings.
“If we score more runs, we’re talking about what a good game he pitched,” A’s manager Bob Melvin said. “Two mistakes.”
Jones’ stay might have begun and ended with Friday’s game, but he gave himself a nice souvenir — his third career homer. Last year, he began his bigleague career with 17 hitless at-bats.
“I was hoping it hooked,” Jackson said. “But he hit it so hard, by the time it started hooking, it was already off the pole.”
McCutchen drove in a run with a sacrifice fly off Yusmeiro Petit in the eighth and he made two stylish sliding catches, robbing Matt Chapman of a hit in the fourth and Jonathan Lucroy of one in the fifth.
Giants manager Bruce Bochy said he liked everything about his club’s second-half opener, from Rodriguez’s pitching and the team’s defense to the clutch two-out hitting and two homers (after the Giants had hit just six in July).
“It had to be one of our better games,” Bochy said. “We played well in all facets.”
Petit, a former Giants reliever, was charged with a second run when Brandon Crawford’s single off Ryan Buchter sent in Steve Duggar. Petit had been unscored upon in his previous five games and 11 innings.
The A’s are averaging 3.7 runs at home compared to 5.4 on the road, but Friday’s scoring issues were more to do with the Giants’ pitchers, according to Melvin. “Every one of their guys pitched well, and their starter was terrific,” Melvin said.
The A’s dropped the first game of the three-game series at AT&T Park a week earlier but came back to win the next two there.
Friday’s game drew 45,606, the A’s first sellout since April 3, 2017. The team is opening Mt. Davis for Saturday night’s game in the hopes of setting an alltime baseball attendance mark at the Coliseum — and all tickets for the Mt. Davis section have been sold out. There were tickets remaining elsewhere as of Friday night, but the A’s believe they’ll have a good shot at surpassing the current record of 55,989, set on June 26, 2004, against the Giants.
Oakland’s post-break rotation appears set. Melvin said that, as anticipated, left-hander Brett Anderson will start Monday at Texas and Frankie Montas is likely to go Tuesday. That means that Daniel Mengden will remain at Triple-A Nashville for the time being. “We’ll see where this five goes right now,” Melvin said. “When Mengden’s pitching well, he’s pitched as well as anyone on our staff. My guess is we’ll see him at some point, but I’m not really sure when.”
Anderson has a 6.08 ERA, so he could be on a short leash with Mengden in the wings.