Peralta’s walkoff single negates rally
A’s manager Bob Melvin has noted before that his hitters sometimes seem to have tougher and more productive atbats as a game goes along. Why exactly is less clear, but it has emerged as a theme in the first half of this shortened season.
The A’s have been held scoreless into the fifth inning or later in 10 of 23 games. They have won six of those games and rallied from a late threerun deficit Monday night but couldn’t complete the comeback in a 43 loss to the Diamondbacks, who won on David Peralta’s walkoff single in the ninth.
Held scoreless until the seventh by Zac Gallen, the A’s cut their deficit to 31 on a Robbie Grossman homer and tied the game in the eighth against Arizona’s bullpen. Vimael Machin singled and Austin Allen doubled against reliever Hector Rondon. After a Matt Chapman sacrifice fly, lefthander Andrew Chafin induced a twoout flare by Matt Olson — but Gold Glove shortstop Nick Ahmed dropped it, allowing Allen to
score the tying run.
Gallen had mostly stymied the A’s, holding them hitless until the sixth inning. One reason that wasn’t unusual: Gallen has not allowed more than three earned runs in any of his first 20 majorleague starts, an NL record. Another reason: Starting pitchers have fared much better this season against the A’s lineup than have relievers.
Entering Monday’s game, the A’s were collectively hitting .207 against starters with a .659 OPS that ranked 24th in the majors. Against relievers, they were hitting .259 with an OPS of .890, which ranked second. They had scored 45 runs against starters and led the majors with 73 runs against opposing bullpens.
After the A’s tagged the Giants’ bullpen for 22 runs in a threegame sweep, Melvin was asked Sunday if he could explain the late awakenings.
“Sometimes it’s more difficult against the relievers,” Melvin said. “You want to try to settle in against the starters and get multiple atbats and get a feel for what he has. But I think it has a little to do with maybe early in games the tenacity isn’t really there. You come out and there’s nobody in the stands and it just looks like — at least from our perspective, other teams may be looking at it differently or scoring more early in games — but it seems like at times it takes both teams a while to get into the flow. And then you just forget about what’s going on and start grinding.”
Grossman’s homer Monday was the A’s 14th in the seventh inning or later — they’d entered the day tied for most in the majors and second in runs (48) in those late innings only to Arizona.
“I can’t give you anything for that,” catcher Sean Murphy said Monday afternoon when asked for a possible explanation. “It’s not a lack of focus. Everybody’s up there focused every atbat. We’re not giving anything away. Just we’ve had more success later in games and hopefully we can change that and play a full nine innings and put up hits earlier in games.”
It narrowed the margin Monday for A’s starter Chris Bassitt, who allowed only a solo homer by Peralta until the sixth. Peralta doubled and scored from third when second baseman Tony Kemp threw home on Eduardo Escobar’s grounder. An errant pickoff throw by Bassitt allowed Escobar to take third and he scored on Carson Kelly’s chopper over a drawnin infield.
Over the weekend, the A’s had beaten the Giants in games they trailed by five and three runs in the ninth inning, becoming the fourth modernera team to win consecutive games after trailing by three or more in the ninth or later, according to Stats LLC. They were tied for the majorleague lead in comefrombehind wins, with nine.
“Down in the dugout it doesn’t feel like we’re ever out of a game,” infielder Chad Pinder said. “I feel like that’s kind of been the case the past two or three years.”
Pinder was not in the lineup Monday a day after he was 3for4 with a key homer off the bench at San Francisco. Neither was Khris Davis, who has started three of the A’s past eight games. The A’s have faced eight consecutive righthanded starters, a stretch that has limited atbats for their righthanded platoon players. They are finally scheduled to face a lefthander Thursday in Arizona’s Alex Young.