Starter Manaea allows just four hits for a win over Yankees.
Graveman’s replacement holds New York scoreless over 7 to outduel Tanaka
NEW YORK — The A’s badly needed a pitcher to step up after their opening day starter scratched Friday.
The man they turned to said he didn’t think for a second about replacing Kendall Graveman, who is likely going on the disabled list sometime this weekend.
“I feel I don’t have to be something that I’m not,” Manaea said after shackling the Yankees with four hits and one walk over seven scoreless innings in a 4-1 win. “I’m just trying not to make things that aren’t supposed to be. I try to go out every fifth day to put my team in a position to win.”
He hasn’t always been able to do that, but he’s been working on his mental game, what he calls his “big mentality switch.” Someone else might call it mental swagger.
“In my head I was thinking that these guys weren’t going to hit me at all,” Manaea said of his start against the team that leads the American League in runs scored. “I just needed to throw strikes and trust the defense and I know I can get these guys out. To me, it was a big mentality switch, believing in myself and trusting everything.”
Manaea did that and more. Plagued off and on by walks this season, he walked the first batter he faced, then told himself he was “just done with it.” He walked no one else, struck out eight and kept the A’s in a game on a night when mistakes weren’t permissible.
Yankees’ starter Masahiro Tanaka threw a terrific game, too, but after seven shutout innings and 13 strikeouts, took the
loss when the A’s broke through in the eighth to improve to 22-25.
“He was incredible tonight and really fun to watch,” Manaea said of Tanaka. “It says a lot about our team, not giving up, putting good ABs together. Even though the first couple of innings were a little rough, in the later innings we started figuring things out and putting the ball in play.”
Tanaka was at the top of his game, and even the eighth-inning-break-through by the A’s wasn’t all that much on him. He came out of the game after Adam Rosales’ one-out single. Reliever Tyler Clippard, who was with the A’s a couple of years ago, took over and the A’s had success with someone who wasn’t throwing sliders and split-finger pitches that darted in and out of the strike zone.
With two out, base runner Rajai Davis stole second and Matt Joyce walked. That brought up Jed Lowrie, whose streak of hits in seven consecutive at-bats had come to an end with a sixth-inning grounder. He turned on Clippard’s first pitch and drove a ground to right for his third hit of the game. Not only did Rajai Davis score, but moments later, Khris Davis beat out an infield hit as Joyce came home for a 2-0 lead.
Stephen Vogt homered in the ninth before Santiago Casilla gave up a run in the ninth as the shutout slipped away.
It was Lowrie to whom the A’s were tipping their caps when they weren’t talking about Manaea.
“Somebody here has to hit .300,” Khris Davis said. “All year long he’s been our most consistent hitter.”
Lowrie now has seven hits in his last two games and nine hits in his last three, of which five are doubles. Over a slightly longer stretch he is 16-for-29 during a seven-game hitting streak that has his average up to .310.
“My mindset is the same as it always is,” Lowrie said when asked what he’d changed. “It’s all about the work. It’s always fun when it all comes together.”
Adam Rosales came out of the game having slammed his right cheek into the ground on a slide at third base. He said of the Yankee Stadium infield, “it’s just sticky out there.” “The dirt doesn’t have too much slide to it like in Oakland.” He said his right cheek “is probably going to bruise up.”
Graveman was supposed to start Friday, but he’s not even with the team after more shoulder trouble cropped up. Jesse Hahn, whose triceps/elbow injury is still giving him problems, may also go on the disabled list. The A’s are waiting on the completion of some medical tests before finalizing the DL moves, which would be the 15th and 16th of the season.
Jharel Cotton will start Saturday, the game originally designated for Manaea. Cotton flew in from Triple-A Nashville and will be activated Saturday morning.
Yonder Alonso’s injured right wrist is much improved, but he still is not likely to be in the A’s lineup before Sunday. He said he was 50-50 to start Friday, but didn’t. With the Yankees starting a left-handed Saturday, Alonso is likely to get that day off, too and come back Sunday. “We’re treating this like we would a rolled ankle,” Alonso said. “It gets better by the hours. And that’s good news. I’m happy with the treatment and with the way the wrist has responded.”
When the A’s went scoreless through the first five innings, it was the 13th time in 47 games they’d done that. That’s 27.7 percent of the time the A’s do that, more than one-quarter of the time.
Friday was just the third A’s road win of the month in 10 May road games. The Oakland home record in May is 8-4.