No breaks for Mengden as defensive woes prove costly
OAKLAND >> There are days where a pitcher’s final line doesn’t tell the whole story. Daniel Mengden had one of those days.
A quick glance at the A’s starter’s numbers in Saturday’s 8-3 loss to the Los Angeles Angels shows a rather ugly sight — six runs on seven hits with a walk and five strikeouts over 5 2/3 innings. But Mengden was the victim of some bad A’s defense at the Coliseum.
Leading off the game, Stephen Piscotty tried to dive for a low line drive by Zack Cozart. Piscotty was unable to make the catch, allowing the ball to roll past him to the right field wall for a triple instead of a probable single if Piscotty were to let it bounce in front of him. Mike Trout brought Cozart home with a double on the next at-bat.
Khris Davis later dove and missed a sharp line drive from Rene Rivera in left field to lead off the third, setting the table for a few more defensive woes. Bruce Maxwell mishandled a pair of pitches that were ruled as wild pitches, one allowing Rivera to move to third and the other letting Trout reach first base on a strikeout.
With one out in the inning, Mengden appeared to induce Justin Upton into a potential double play to end the inning without any damage, but the ground ball bounced off Marcus Semien’s glove at short. He then was late on his throw to first, recording no outs and leading to two more Angels runs.
Though A’s manager Bob Melvin said he had no issue with Piscotty’s aggressiveness on the ball in the first, the rest of the mishaps were uncharacteristic of what he had seen from the muchimproved defense in spring training.
“That’s not what we’re expecting. Hopefully we put that one away,” Melvin said. “Mengden didn’t deserve the fate that he got. I thought he threw the ball pretty well. That one inning, he probably got six outs and didn’t get out of the inning without a couple of runs.”
The loss dropped Mengden’s career record at the Coliseum to 0-9 in 12 starts.
While the defensive woes didn’t help, Mengden said they did not affect him on the mound. He felt he threw the ball well, mixing his pitches and getting out of a few jams that prevented the score from getting even more lopsided.
“I have to control what I can control, and that’s executing and making pitches,” Mengden said. “Stuff like that is gonna happen. You just have to overcome it.”
Making his first start of the season behind the plate, Maxwell placed the blame on himself for both of Mengden’s wild pitches.
“I was just late. It’s all on me and unacceptable,” Maxwell said. “I put us in tough situations and they capitalized on it to put the game a little further out of reach than it should have been.”
For as much frustration as there was on the defensive side, it was equally frustrating on offense.
The A’s were 3 for 6 with runners in scoring position, but they also left nine runners on base.
Loading the bases with two outs in the seventh, Matt Olson represented the tying run down 7-3 at the time, but the slugger struck out to leave the runners stranded.
“We’re one swing away from tying it,” Melvin said. “It was good that we battled back after sitting with a 7-0 deficit. It’s the attribute you want to see. We just dug ourselves in too big of a hole.”
• The spectacle that is “Ohtani-Mania” will reach its climax Sunday at the Coliseum when Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani makes his first major league start.
Having already seen the two-way star at the plate as he went 1 for 5 with a single on opening day, the A’s are in the dark trying to forecast what type of pitcher they might see on the mound. Melvin can only go off the club’s scouting reports from Japan, which have Ohtani throwing a fastball that can reach up to 100 mph and featuring a nasty splitter.
“There’s a lot of curiosity all the way around,” Melvin said. “The pitching dynamic, certainly there’s not a ton to go on. We’ll get a first-hand look at it tomorrow, but usually you have a little bit better idea going to the plate on what you’re gonna see. In this case, not so much.”