Deja vu all over: Astros crush A’s when it counts
LOS ANGELES — Ramón Laureano couldn’t will the A’s past the Astros all on his own Thursday, though goodness knows the onetime Houston minorleaguer tried.
Laureano, whose “emotional outburst” helped keep the A’s alive another day, drove in four runs with two homers Thursday, but Oakland’s pitching staff simply couldn’t keep the Astros in check in an 116 loss in Game 4 of the Division Series at Dodger Stadium.
And with that, the A’s playoff run is over once again.
“It’s a bad feeling,” Laureano said. “Hopefully it doesn’t happen next year. We have to keep our heads up and keep working, keep dreaming about
moving forward and winning a World Series.”
“It just hurts,” outfielder Mark Canha said. “It hurts a lot.”
Over the past 21 seasons, Oakland has made it to the postseason 11 times and has made it to the ALCS just once. This latest in a long string of playoff flops was particularly painful; the Astros are coming off one of pro sports’ biggest cheating scandals, and they’d finished second in the AL West, seven games behind the A’s, who had taken seven of 10 regularseason meetings between the teams.
Though Oakland players are unlikely to make excuses after failing to advance yet again, there were a number of unusual factors during this most unusual of seasons, including the fact that the A’s, who were 2210 at the Coliseum during the regular season and won the wildcard series in Oakland, held “homefield advantage” — but the Division Series was played at a neutral site with no fans. The Astros probably benefited all season from empty stands on the road — with the exception of Houston’s own fans, there is a tremendous amount of anger toward Houston throughout baseball and they’d have faced merciless heckling all season away from home.
Even more pertinent: The A’s were without team leader Matt Chapman, the best defensive player in the league. Without Chapman, there was a notable dropoff in the field throughout the postseason, and the team also missed Chapman’s intensity and energy level — Laureano could do only so much to make up for that.
But every team is missing important pieces this time of year. The Astros beat Oakland without A’s nemesis Justin Verlander, for instance, and Game 4 starter Zack Greinke reportedly was not at full strength — but he managed to handle everyone except Laureano pretty well.
Oakland had two major issues throughout the postseason: hitting with runners in scoring position and unreliable pitching. The A’s allowed 33 runs in the four games against Houston, and though Oakland scored first in each of the four games, the Astros came back every time.
“It was kind of a slugfest,” Canha said. “And they outslugged us in the end.”
“You start to realize any lead early in the game is not enough, either side,” A’s shortstop Marcus Semien said. “It just didn’t feel safe. ... In this series, you just had to keep adding on, and they did that today and we couldn’t catch them. It easily could have flipped, we had a couple of innings where we could have tacked on some runs and it didn’t happen.”
Thursday, the team batted just a handful of times with a man in scoring position, including once when Laureano whacked his first homer. The A’s were 5for21 with runners in scoring position in the Division Series and 8for35 overall against the Astros and the White Sox.
The team’s rotation, generally regarded as one of the better groups in the postseason, was subpar in the wildcard and Division Series rounds, with the exception of Chris Bassitt’s Game 2 outing against the White Sox. And the bullpen, baseball’s best during the regular season, was a letdown more often than not, never more so than Thursday.
Oakland starter Frankie Montas looked terrific through the first three innings but imploded and fast in the fourth inning, as five consecutive batters reached and Michael Brantley provided a tworun homer and Carlos Correa a threerun shot to put Houston out front 53.
Laureano added a solo homer of his own in the fifth to cut the Astros’ lead to one, but the A’s relievers couldn’t hold things there. Brantley homered to open the fifth against J. B. Wendelken. After Wendelken walked Alex Bregman, lefty Mike Minor took over and gave up singles to Kyle Tucker and Correa, pushing Houston’s advantage to 74. And in the sixth, Joakim Soria allowed two more runs, also on RBI hits by Tucker and Correa ( who finished with 11 RBIs in the series).
The A’s had a shot to make some noise when Robbie Grossman doubled with two outs and Sean Murphy singled him to third — and Semien hit a drive toward the wall in left that came up just a few feet short of going out.
“I’m shocked Marcus’ ball didn’t go out,” A’s manager Bob Melvin said. “I don’t know, maybe the wind was blowing in. Every ball that was hit 100 mph went out and that one didn’t. If that ball goes out, it’s a whole different ballgame.”
Instead, the Astros added two more runs in the bottom of the inning, when José Altuve homered off Jake Diekman, who allowed only one run during the regular season. And the A’s squandered a leadoff double by Tommy La Stella in the eighth before scoring twice in the ninth, with Semien, in perhaps his final atbat with the A’s, driving in one run and La Stella another.
“I took the field in the bottom of the eighth and was like, ‘ Is this my last time playing shortstop for this team?’” Semien said. “I don’t know.”
Former A’s right fielder Josh Reddick helped hold Oakland down, taking a possible home run away from Matt Olson with a small jump at the low wall in the rightfield corner in the fourth.
The A’s have fallen behind 02 in nine postseason series and never have come back to win any of them.
“We can hang our heads, we played some good ball, we showed some fight,” Semien said. “But we ran into an offense that was really hot.”