A’S PEN SAD TALE IN BRONX
Yankees overpower Oakland’s pitching variety pack; A’s bats fall silent
NEW YORK >> A look of dejection came over the nine A’s players on the field as the raucous crowd at Yankee Stadium erupted after Luke Voit’s two-run triple to increase a Yankees lead to 5-0.
Voit’s hit against any A’s pitcher would have been a tough blow, but coming against All-Star closer Blake Treinen in the sixth inning, it was truly a dagger in the Yankees’ 7-2 win Wednesday night in the AL wild-card game.
Teams just don’t score off Treinen, who put together a 0.78 ERA over 80 1/3 innings in the regular season, lowest in Major League Baseball history among pitchers with a minimum of 75 innings. This time Treinen was charged with three over two innings, also surrendering a solo home run to Giancarlo Stanton in the eighth.
“I just didn’t do a good job of executing pitches. I left mistakes up late,” Treinen said. “Had a hard time really getting my slider down and that’s what’s
frustrating because I felt like I had a pretty good sinker and Stanton was an MVP last year for a reason. Kind of a tough time to swallow it this late in the year. Sometimes you don’t have your best stuff and it’s the biggest game of the year.”
The game got out of hand for the A’s
with not only their best pitcher on the mound, but a pitcher likely to garner MVP votes.
“That’s the guy we want on the mound no matter what,” A’s third baseman Matt Chapman said. “He’s a guy who’s carried us and pretty much been an MVP guy for us. He came into a situation he’s not accustomed to, but I know he wanted the ball and that’s who we wanted on the mound.”
The loss bumped the A’s out of the playoffs in the wild-card stage for the second straight time. They have gone past the first round just once in nine attempts since 2002.
Treinen entered in the sixth as more of a move of desperation by manager Bob Melvin after Fernando Rodney lost control of his pitches and allowed the Yankees to extend their lead to three runs while failing to record an out.
The loss also does not fall entirely on the muchscrutinized “bullpenning” strategy the A’s have employed this year. Yes, starter Liam Hendriks surrendered a two-run homer to Aaron Judge in the first, but Lou Trivino and Shawn Kelley did their best to keep the A’s in the game by following Hendriks with four scoreless innings, with Trivino retiring eight batters in a row from the second to the fourth.
This loss ultimately falls on the offense.
The same group which boasted the second-highest road batting average (.262) and most road home runs (136) in the majors looked about how one might expect a young offense to look on a loud October night in New York — overwhelmed.
“It’s important for the young guys to get a taste of what that was like because that’s what playoff baseball is like, especially here in a good environment,” said A’s catcher Jonathan Lucroy, one of only three hitters in the starting lineup with postseason experience. “It’s one of the toughest environments in the league. We couldn’t get that big knock.”
It’s hard to explain how loud the crowd was at Yankee Stadium.
Judge’s home run in the first set the tone. The flashing lights and sirens that reverberated throughout the stadium seemed to rattle every person wearing green and gold inside.
Khris Davis put the A’s on the board in the eighth with a two-run homer off Zach Britton in an effort to bring life back into the A’s and cut the deficit to 6-2, but it’s the lack of production from Davis and the rest of the lineup overall that made the difference.
“You know it’s going to be loud, it’s Yankee Stadium,” Melvin said. “Sometimes it’s difficult to overcome that. But I thought after we got through the first and settled in a little bit our atbats would get better and we’d get back in it. We just
didn’t do it.”
A’s hitters went 0 for 6 with runners in scoring position, leaving nine runners on base. They left the bases loaded in the fourth, with Marcus Semien swinging through a 100 mph fastball from Luis Severino for strike three, and failed to produce anything in the fifth after leading off with back-to-back singles. If the A’s come through in either of those clutch situations, perhaps you don’t look for your dominant closer to put out a fire as early as the sixth.
The heavy load the A’s offense carried over a remarkable 97-65 regular season, which few saw coming out of spring training, became unbearable on this night.
“As far as the wild-card game, we’ve had a tough time with it. And it’s frustrating,” Melvin said. “They got off to a good start with the home run and ended up adding on. We just didn’t do enough offensively tonight. You do have to give them credit. They pitched well.”
It’s a tough pill for the A’s to swallow, but Chapman, who emerged this season as an AL MVP candidate and leader of the A’s, believes was an experience that will help them out should they get back to this position.
With exciting top prospects in the minors such as pitchers Jesus Luzardo and AJ Puk ready to make an impact, getting back to that position could come as early as next year.
“I’m excited we made the playoffs. It’s something we all wanted to do,” Chapman, who finished 1 for 5, said. “We were able to accomplish that with a lot of young guys and a low payroll, so I think that the sky is the limit for our team and I think everybody is motivated to get back to work.”