Another patented comeback win by A’s
The A’s sent their fans on an emotional roller coaster featuring happiness, anger and ecstasy all in the span of one inning Tuesday.
After booing Santiago Casilla off the mound in the eighth inning for blowing Chris Smith’s shot at his first win since 2008 and first of his career, the crowd of 13,875 fans at the Coliseum was sent into a frenzy after the A’s completed another one of their late-inning comebacks that have become very common at home this season in a 10-8 victory over the Kansas City Royals.
Matt Joyce was responsible for the madness. After the A’s had already begun the inning with four straight hits off Joakim Soria to cut the deficit to 8-6, Joyce batted with the bases loaded and delivered the knockout punch, smashing a double off the left field wall to clear the bases and put the A’s ahead 9-8.
The wild eighth inning featured a combined total of 10 hits and 11 runs scored.
A’s manager Bob Melvin called the comeback “gutsy” and said it showed the type of winning atmosphere the club is trying to create for its young players as it continues its youth movement.
“A lot of young guys put together really good at-bats. Momentum obviously went from us to them pretty significantly,” Melvin said. “That’s really the culture we want to set with these guys is we’re going to come back. No matter what, we’re gonna fight and if we go down, we go down bleeding.”
The Royals elected to load the bases for the left-handed hitting Joyce by intentionally walking pinch-hitter Rajai Davis with two outs.
It was a situation that Joyce said he saw unfolding with lefty Mike Minor on the mound, figuring that they would pitch to him with the favorable lefty-on-lefty matchup.
As a grizzled veteran at 33 playing with mostly rookies and second-year players, Joyce was proud to see the fight that was displayed by his younger teammates after receiving a gut-punch just a half-inning earlier.
“That was awesome. It’s tough to give up the lead late and frustrating for everybody but to be able to come back and battle, have good at-bats, start a rally and come away with a win speaks a lot to these guys’ ability to keep playing the game,” Joyce said. “They don’t give up and it’s really fun to watch a lot of these young talented guys play the game the right way.”
It was a scene that was all too familiar for A’s starting pitcher Smith.
The 36-year-old veteran handed the ball to Melvin after recording the first out of the fifth, leaving a potential victory in the hands of the A’s bullpen with just 11 outs to go. The A’s were more than halfway there, but then Santiago Casilla blew it all up.
Casilla entered the game in eighth inning and ruined Smith’s potential feelgood story by surrendering a two-run home run to Drew Butera, giving the Royals a 5-4 lead and crushing Smith’s hopes of earning the win.
Smith’s dream scenario quickly turned into a nightmare as the Royals opened the floodgates. Blake Treinen was summoned in relief of Casilla and surrendered a two-run home run to Eric Hosmer and a solo bomb to Mike Moustakas just two batters later to go from a 4-3 lead to an 8-4 deficit all in the same inning.
It was deja vu all over again for Smith, who was dealt a similar blow in July after pitching seven innings and exiting the game with the lead only to watch Casilla blow a save by surrendering a go-ahead home run in the ninth. Smith became the oldest player to make his first major league start earlier this season. He spent six years battling his way through the minors and independent leagues and even took a year off from baseball before finding his way back to the big leagues last year in the A’s bullpen.
After a rough first inning that saw him allow three runs after just four batters faced, Smith settled down to give the A’s 5 1/3 innings of work, allowing just the three runs and only one hit after the first.
“During that first inning, I might have blacked out. I don’t even know what happened.” Smith joked. “That first inning took everything to get through and cost me pitches for the sixth inning that, looking back now, I needed. That happened fast.”
Home runs have often been Smith’s downfall this season, but this time the long ball helped the 36-yearold veteran. A’s home runs in each of the first three innings provided Smith with just enough support to exit the game with the lead.
Joyce and Matt Olson led off the first and second with home runs, then Khris Davis smashed a tworun homer over the left field wall in the third to give the A’s a 4-3 lead.
Davis’ go-ahead blast was his 33rd of the season, tying him with Texas Rangers slugger Joey Gallo for third-most in the American League. Joyce, who hit his 17th of the year, is well on track to surpass his career-high home run total of 19 set in 2011 as a member of the Tampa Bay Rays.