Honorable win in 2012 served up for team for ages
On an evening dedicated to the 2002 A’s team and its American Leaguerecord 20-game winning streak, the current version of the club couldn’t very well come up short.
There was no dramatic walk-off homer, a la Scott Hatteberg, or even the garden-variety 2012 pie-in-the-kisser sort. Just a plain old, pie-free victory, 8-5 over Cleveland, driven by Bartolo Colon’s staunch pitching and Yoenis Céspedes’ power.
The Indians tried their darnedest to make the game like the A’s roller-coaster 20th win in 2002, coming back from seven down in the ninth and closing the
gap enough that closer Grant Balfour entered the game with two outs.
Colon (10-9) is the third pitcher in Oakland history to record 10 wins in a season at the age of 36 or older.
“That is an accomplishment, but from him, it doesn’t surprise me,” A’s manager Bob Melvin said. “There was a pretty good chance, for me, that he’d win double digits from the first game he threw for us.”
It is the most victories Colon, 39, has recorded since winning the Cy Young Award in 2005 with the Angels. He threw 103 pitches, and only two were changeups — including his final pitch, to strike out Jason Kipnis. Catcher George Kottaras said Colon also threw four or five sliders. The rest: fastballs.
Melvin visited the mound in the eighth with one on and two outs. Melvin said Colon told him three times that he was good to go, and that one of the other players had said something to make everyone laugh, including Colon.
The heavy-set Colon, through interpreter Ariel Prieto, said shortstop Cliff Pennington had said, “You look fat a little bit, so you’ll probably be tired.”
Colon went eight innings and allowed five hits and one run. He struck out three, and for the ninth time this season, walked zero batters.
Oakland got going in the third, when Josh Donaldson drove in Pennington with a grounder to shortstop, and Josh Reddick provided an RBI double. Céspedes followed with his 16th homer of the season and his second in three games; he drove in three runs in all.
Reddick, who didn’t start two of the previous four games because of complications from a tooth extraction, provided a big boost on defense simply by being in right field. After Asdrubal Cabrera’s one-out double in the fourth, Shin-soo Choo singled, and Cabrera sprinted around third. He screeched to a halt, because Reddick, with one of the league’s best arms, was uncorking a one-bounce throw to the plate. Colon then induced a 4-6-3 double play to end the inning.
Carlos Santana homered in the seventh off Colon, Choo hit a two-run homer off Evan Scribner in the ninth, and Brent Lillibridge hit a two-run pinchhit homer off Jerry Blevins.
Before the game, the A’s honored players and coaches from the 2002 team. In a particularly poignant moment, Cory Lidle’s widow, Melanie, and son, Christopher, were recognized on the field, and a check was presented to the Cory Lidle Foundation.