Athletics home woes continue in blowout loss to Twins
OAKLAND — The Athletics would love to have more fans in the stands, but in truth they haven’t been doing a lot of late at the Coliseum to encourage a groundswell of support.
The A’s were spanked 14-4 Wednesday on getaway day by the Minnesota Twins before a crowd of 7,106, ending their latest homestand, their most one-sided loss of the season. How one-sided was it? The A’s had outfielder/infielder Chad Pinder pitch the ninth inning rather than use another arm in the bullpen. Pinder gave up three runs on two hits, two walks and a hit batter on pitches ranging from 43.6 to 85.4 miles per hour.
It was the first time since 2011 the Twins won a series in Oakland. The A’s left town afterward on a six-game road trip to face the Los Angeles Angels and Seattle Mariners.
In losing two of three to the A.L. Central leaders, the Athletics fell to 16-24 overall and 6-14 at home. They’ve lost 11 of their last 13 at the Coliseum and endured the indignity of a historic winless (0-6) homestand from April 29 through May 4.
After a brief respite in a 5-2 win Tuesday night, the A’s fell back into a pattern of failing to produce key hits with runners in scoring position. And instead of the solid starting pitching they’ve had of late, Daulton Jefferies got into trouble right away and wasn’t around for the fifth inning in a game he was looking forward to as a fan of Sonny Gray as a college pitcher at Cal.
Gray, the former A’s starter, gave up two runs in six innings, scattering five hits with no walks and five strikeouts in evening his record at 1-1 as the Twins improved to 22-16.
In falling to 1-7, Jefferies pitched four innings, giving up six earned runs with three walks and five strikeouts. He threw 78 pitches, 49 for strikes.
When the fifth inning came around, Justin Grimm took over on the mound.
From the start, it wasn’t Jefferies day. He gave up three runs in the top of the first on a two-run single by Gary Sanchez and a ground ball single by Gio Urshela, both of which were well-placed rather than on the barrel.
Sanchez struck again with a two-out run-scoring single in the third, and their two-out magic continued in the fourth. After Jefferies retired the first two hitters, he walked Byron Buxton, and Minnesota struck for two more runs on RBI doubles from Luis Arraez and Carlos Correa to make it 6-2.
A disastrous inning that included three walks, five hits and five earned runs given up in twothirds of an inning by left-hander Kirby Snead broke the game wide open and put Minnesota up 11-2 in the sixth inning.
While the Twins were converting in any and all run-scoring situations, the A’s were struggling. Seth Brown, whose bat has awoken from its slumber, singled in a run in the first. He drove in Ramon Laureano, who hit the ball safely to center and hustled his way into a double with two out.
The A’s had a run cut down at the plate in the second when Luis Barrera, running on contact with the infield in, was thrown out trying to score on a grounder by Elvis Andrus to Correa at short.
Oakland got its second against Gray in the third when Brown hit a triple into the right-field corner that bounced away from Kepler, scoring on a smash by Christian Bethancourt past Urshula at third base.
Not counting the season-high total of 17,503 on Opening Night, the crowd count Wednesday was the largest of the season on a game played Monday through Thursday. The previous high was 4,838 against Tampa Bay on May 4.