Familiar recipe spices up sweep
Big inning, bullpen-by-committee too much for Texas
OAKLAND >> Even on days the A’s don’t plan on utilizing the “bullpenning” strategy, it seems to be working out that way lately.
A day after Edwin Jackson’s start lasted just three innings, Trevor Cahill struggled to throw strikes and turned in his shortest outing of the season. But the A’s offense and bullpen bailed out the right-hander to complete a sweep of the Texas Rangers in Sunday’s 7-3 victory, bringing the A’s within 21/2 games of the Yankees for the top wild-card spot with 18 games remaining.
“With an offense like this, you get spoiled,” Cahill said. “You expect them to come out and score runs. They did it again today.”
Cahill was in danger of letting things get out of hand from the beginning as he walked the first three batters of the game. Though a run would score on Nomar Mazara’s sacrifice fly, Cahill limited the damage to just one run.
But it was clear Cahill was
not on his game.
After a scoreless second, Cahill again struggled to find the strike zone as he walked the first two batters of the third. After Adrian Beltre’s RBI single to right extended the Rangers (61-82) lead to three runs, A’s manager Bob Melvin ended the outing and went to right-hander Shawn Kelley.
“He just kind of lost the arm slot for a little while. It was just one of those days for him unfortunately,” Melvin said. “I don’t think the stuff was bad. Just the command of it was not so good.”
Kelley began a sequence of seven relievers who came on in relief to keep the Rangers off the scoreboard for 6 1/3 innings, concluding with All-Star closer Blake Treinen turning in a perfect ninth.
It was the second consecutive day the A’s (87-57) used eight pitchers in a game, something that usually can be a death knell for a relief corps. But with 14 pitchers now in Melvin’s bullpen, it becomes a little easier to pull the plug early on a starter if they are having a bad day.
“There’s plenty of depth to go around,” Melvin said. “We were getting deeper contributions from the starters there for a while. Right now maybe not so much and we’re having to cover a lot of the game but my feeling is that they’ll respond and they’ll start going deeper in games so we can cut down on the amount of guys we use.”
The A’s offense was quiet for the first three innings of the day, but as they’ve shown all year, they can produce an avalanche in the span of an inning. That’s what happened in the fourth.
Five runs crossed the plate in the inning, capped off by Ramón Laureano’s double off the high wall in right-center to put the A’s ahead 5-3.
Though it was a big inning, it lacked the production from the typical stars like Khris Davis, who grounded into a force out in the inning, or Matt Chapman, who drew a walk. But that’s what makes the offense so dangerous. Guys like Franklin Barreto, who got his first start since getting called up Sept. 1 to spell Jed Lowrie with a day off, can strike at any time like
he did with an RBI single off Ariel Jurado in that fourth.
“I think it’s pretty exemplary of how our entire season has been. It hasn’t just been one guy, we’re picking each other up,” A’s outfielder Stephen Piscotty said. “If KD doesn’t have his best game, we can still score runs. It’s not like if he doesn’t get on we panic. Everyone else knows to kick it in gear. It’s a special thing, it’s rare, and when we got it going, it’s pretty special.”
Piscotty later homered in the seventh off Matt Moore, a solo shot to increase the A’s lead to four runs. It was Piscotty’s 23rd home run of the season, surpassing his previous career-high of 22, which was set in 2016 with the St. Louis Cardinals.
“I don’t really set those numerical goals. Getting over 20 is huge for me,” Piscotty said. “Everything now is just bonus. But it feels good to set a career-high and add another insurance run there. We’ll see how high I can go.”
Moved up to the three-hole in the lineup Sunday, it’s not just impressive power that Piscotty is showing. The Pleasanton native is putting together an impressive season at the plate all around, now batting .265 with 75 RBIs and tied for sixth in the AL with 38 doubles.
Having also extended his hitting streak to 11 games, Piscotty credited his recent success to some adjustments at the plate he made a few months back with Broch Ungricht, a former coach of his from his Stanford days.
“That kind of got me back to feeling like myself. Driving the ball to all fields and really getting back to going the other way, which is something I’ve always been really good at but kind of fell away from,” Piscotty said. “Just trying to continue making adjustments. Pitchers are making noticeable changes to how I’m pitched, so I gotta adjust to that.”
• Brett Anderson will be activated from the disabled list and is scheduled to start Thursday’s game against the Orioles. The left-hander went down with a left forearm strain in a start at Houston last month.
• Frankie Montas will be called up and also join the club Tuesday. He could potentially be the starter who enters the game following the “opener” Liam Hendriks in Wednesday’s game, though Melvin said that decision is still up in the air.