A’s, Astros combine for record home run total in ALDS

Bob Melvin couldn’t believe it. The A’s manager had watched home run after home run fly out of Dodger Stadium over four days of the AL Division Series. In the seventh inning of Game 4, with Oakland trailing 9-4 and two runners on, shortstop Marcus Semien arced a drive to left that left his bat at 100.2 mph with a 34-degree launch angle — modern-speak for a ball with serious home-run potential.

It died at the warning track, with Astros left fielder Kyle Tucker leaping to catch it at the wall.

“I’m shocked that Marcus’ ball didn’t go out,” Melvin said after the A’s season ended with an 11-6 loss to Houston. “That’s a ball that now, all of a sudden, we’re within two. And that’s the way the series is going. I don’t know.

“Maybe the wind was blowing in at that time or whatever, but every ball that was hit like that at 100 mph seemed to go out. That one didn’t.”

Melvin’s use of “every” wasn’t much of a stretch — in four day games in warm Los Angeles, the A’s and Astros took baseball’s current penchant for homers to record-setting extreme.

Their 24 combined home runs — 12 by each team — set a record for a Division Series, breaking the mark of 22 set by the Mariners and Yankees in the 1995 ALDS. Fifteen A’s or Astros players went deep in four games this week.

Only three postseason series in MLB history have featured more homers: the 2008 ALCS (26), 2004 NLCS (25) and 2017 World Series (25), according to stats expert David Feldman. Each of those series lasted seven games.

“You knew to an extent there was never going to be a lead that felt like it was too big,” Melvin said.

Nine of the 12 home runs hit by the A’s were solo shots, which hurt them. The Astros hit three homers with runners on base, and four total, in their series-clinching win Thursday alone.

Michael Brantley’s two-run homer off A’s starter Frankie Montas, which cut the A’s lead to 3-2 in the fourth inning, left the bat at 107.2 mph and went an estimated 391 feet. Three batters later, Carlos Correa clobbered a high Montas breaking ball for a three-run homer that shot off his bat at 111.6 mph and traveled 427 feet.

In the seventh, a half-inning after Semien’s drive fell short, Jose Altuve hit a fastball from Jake Diekman an estimated 428 feet to center field for a two-run shot, making it 11-4.

“I think the first three games it was, if you barrel it in the air, it’s got a chance,” Semien said. “I think today, the home runs that were hit were legit. Those balls were crushed and it played a little bit more true. We saw that on my ball. But that’s more what we’re used to in Oakland.”

The results for A’s pitchers, though, were more like the road. During the regular season, the A’s allowed more than twice as many home runs per nine innings away from Oakland (1.73) as they did at the Coliseum (0.78). Neither the A’s nor Astros’ offenses ranked in the top half of the American League in homers in the regular season. For four days, they made Dodger Stadium look small.

“It just came down to hitting the ball over the fence and they did it a little better than we did,” A’s outfielder Mark Canha said. “I don’t know how else to explain it. Just that’s kind of what it felt like.”