A’s end futility, advance in playoffs
Oakland snaps 9-game losing streak in winner-take-all postseason games
OAKLAND » The A’s took the Chicago White Sox’s best punch and didn’t flinch. Oakland overcame a tape-measure home run and a three-run deficit to advance to the American League Division Series for the first time since 2013with a 6- 4winThursday inGame 3 of their wild- card series.
They’ll play their division foe, the Houston Astros, next week after winning their first winner- take- all game since Game 7 of the 1973 World Series against the New York Mets.
The weight of decades of do- or- die failures didn’t crush this A’s team. The young core has been together long enough to sew their own tight bonds and long-termgoals afterwildcard defeats in 2018 and 2019.
“Not everybody has been part of all that,” manager Bob Melvin said of the broken streak. “We’ve had some tough ones in the last two years, but the gold issue was to win the division and try to get the first round off and get to a series.
We got to a series, lost the first game, and really responded well. It was rewarding obviously.”
Because of the pandemic, teams aren’t allowed to celebrate with champagne showers. The A’s could have used a little bubbly during this season, which included a loss in Game 1 — when Oakland didn’t even get a runner on base until the seventh inning — and then two gutty wins to advance.
“Getting that opportunity after that first game to come back and redeem ourselves, that shows the spirit we have and ability to bounce back no matter what happens,” closer Liam Hendriks said.
With no champagne or beer shower, the A’s celebrated by playing a game together. Last year, the A’s stayed loose by playing basketball in the clubhouse. This year they rejoiced in a round of putt-putt golf.
After throwing 19 pitches to save the win Thursday, Hendriks had other plans for celebration.
“I need a nap,” he said. It had been quite a rollercoaster 24 hours for the A’s dominant closer. He entered the ninth inning
Thursday trying to redeem himself after a 49-pitch outingWednesday in which he nearly blew a five-run lead.
An inspiring bullpen session assured him he’d be OK, and he went on to strike out the side after a leadoff single.
“I was happy I was able to rein it in a little bit and make my pitches,” he said.
The grass between the bullpens and the mound was shredded to nubs Thursday. Between both teams, 17 pitcherswere used to get through nine innings.
The White Sox rotated throughnine of them. Manager Rick Renteria went to his bullpen extremely early, pulling starter Dane Dunning with two outs in the first inning after he allowed a pair of hits.
“We talked about it after the game,” infielder Chad Pinder said. “Typically we don’t do well in those bullpen situations. Their bullpen is an incredible bunch. And I think that just going into the series, the preparation we did on their bullpen, knowingwhat their goto pitches were and working counts and not giving away at-bats, I give credit that our lineup could stick it out today.”
The A’s have a tendency to struggle while adjusting to new pitchers. Against a
White Sox bullpen riddled with hard-throwing rookies, the A’s hitters were at their best.
Down 3- 0 in the fourth inning, the A’s forced a seismic shift in momentum when Sean Murphy barreled up Codi Heuer for a two-run home run.
It was Murphy’s eighth home run of the year, and the 424-foot blast was nowhere near his longest. He hit one 464 feet in Texas.
Renteria pulled Heuer
and opted for left-hander Carlos Rodón to face Tommy La Stella, who worked a walk. Marcus Semien followed with a single and Renteria intentionally walked Pinder — who subbed in for Jake Lamb at third — to get to Mark Canha andtoloadthe bases.
Canha and Olson worked back-to-back bases-loaded walks to give the A’s a 4-3 lead, which the White Sox erased in the top of the fifth before Oakland struck
again, using theWhite Sox’s mistakes against them.
The A’s got something going against Chicago reliever Evan Marshall in the fifth. Pinder came up with the big hit, slicing a ball past Tim Anderson’s glove at short to score two and give the A’s a lead theywouldn’t surrender.
It seemed appropriate that the A’s strongest asset — their bullpen — played the most essential role in the club’s biggest game yet.
Consistent throughout,
the bullpen kept the A’s afloat this year with a league- best 2.72 ERA in the regular season. When starter Mike Fiers couldn’t escape the second inning, the bullpen tamped down the White Sox just enough to pave the way for a win.
Yusmeiro Petit escaped a second-inning jam but was squared up in the third when Chicago knocked back-to-back-to- back hits for a pair of runs.
Of all seven relieversMelvin called from the bullpen, Frankie Montas was perhaps the most pivotal. Montas could have been an ideal starter for this doordie game. But the righthander struggled to find his mechanics and confidence this year until his last start Sunday, when he threw 113 pitches, eliminating him fromconsideration as a starter.
Montas is durable and looked fine in his relief appearance, painting 97 mph fastballs with a splitter and slider. He allowed the tying run in thefifth, though, and was pulled after throwing 34 pitches in two innings. But he got the win.
JB Wendelken, Lou Trivino, Jake Diekman and Joakim Soria bobbed and weaved through traffic for three scoreless innings before Hendriks’ heroics.