Big hit comes too late
A’s fall to Rays despite Davis’ grand slam in 9th
ST. PETERSBURG, FLA. >> The A’s nearly wrecked the Rays’ bullpenning strategy, but even a grand slam was too little, too late.
After getting shut down by five different Rays pitchers through eight innings, Khris Davis injected life into the A’s bench as he demolished a hanging slider from Sergio Romo for a grand slam to bring the A’s within one run. But the A’s still fell 5-4, failing to gain ground on the New York Yankees for the second consecutive game as they remain 1½ games back of the top AL wild-card spot with
12 remaining.
The A’s (90-60) drew three consecutive walks against
Jake Faria to lead off the ninth prior to Davis’ slam. Manager Bob Melvin won’t take moral victories at this point of the season, though he was glad to see his squad display that same fight they’ve shown all year after a rough day at the plate in which it took all the way to the fifth inning just to pick up their first hit.
“It’s literally until the last out,” Melvin said. “We came up short today, but it’s good to see on a day that we’re dragging or a little bit flat to be able to put up a four-spot like that.”
Davis likely will not get much AL MVP love with the years being put together by Cleveland’s Jose Ramirez and Boston’s JD Martinez, but the slugger is certainly deserving.
The grand slam was Davis’ major league-leading 43rd home run of the season, matching his careerhigh set in 2017. Having also already set a career-high in RBIs with 115 this year and with two weeks still remaining, this could be the best version of Davis that Melvin has ever seen.
“I wouldn’t count him out for anything right now. He continues to go,” Melvin said. “He’s just one of the best hitters in the league.”
Mike Fiers probably had his worst stuff of any game he’s appeared in since joining the A’s last month. He was all over the place with his control, yet maneuvered his way around Rays hitters to limit damage and keep the A’s within striking distance by the time he left.
Despite surrendering home runs to CJ Cron and Willy Adames, and struggling to throw strikes all day as he walked a seasonhigh three batters and only 45 of his 80 pitches were strikes, Fiers departed after the fourth with the A’s only trailing by three.
“He was fighting,” Melvin said. “He didn’t have his best pitches, but ends up getting out of jams. On a day you don’t have your best stuff you just keep battling like that to keep your team in the game, and we have the propensity to come back. He kept us in a decent spot.”
Making his eighth start with Oakland, it was the first game the A’s have lost with Fiers as their starting pitcher.
It’s hard to explain the reason for his poor command on the mound. Even Fiers, now 12-7 with a 3.38 ERA in 29 starts this year, couldn’t come up with an answer. He said he just had trouble finding any sort of rhythm over the course of his outing, in which he allow three runs over four innings.
“It was just one of those days where you gotta figure it out pretty quick,” Fiers said. “It wasn’t so much the pitches I was throwing, just the location and getting behind in the count. These guys were attacking, and getting ahead is big. I didn’t do that.
“I put the guys behind early, and this game is big on momentum. Just not making quality pitches and I got hurt. Too many jams, too many non-competitive pitches, pretty much everything
bad. I gotta be better.”
Emilio Pagan’s two runs allowed on a triple to Brandon Lowe in the seventh ultimately loomed large, as it put the Rays ahead 5-0 at the time.
Making the big hit even more of a blow to the gut was the fact that it came after Pagan had already recorded two outs in the inning before walking Cron to put two runners on base for Lowe.
“He was one pitch away from getting out of it. He’s gotta find a way to get that last out,” Melvin said. “The walk previous to that cost him a little bit, because now he’s gotta throw the ball over the plate.”
The A’s dropped the rubber match of a three-game set with the Rays, losing a series for just the second time over their last 14.
• Trevor Cahill played catch in Oakland over the weekend as he nurses a rhomboid muscle soreness issue near his right shoulder blade that forced him to miss his scheduled start over the weekend against the Rays. Cahill will throw off the mound at the Coliseum today, which will give the club a better idea on a timetable for his return.
If all goes well, Cahill’s next start could come at home this upcoming weekend against the Minnesota Twins, which will also be the A’s final home series of the regular season.