Manaea can’t get out of 1st inning in rout
By Ron Kroichick
All those A’s fans, bundled against the chill of an August night, earned their fireworks.
That’s what they really came to see, after all. A crowd of 29,742 turned out Saturday night at the Coliseum, mostly to watch the A’s play Baltimore as the prelude to a postgame fireworks show.
The outcome essentially was decided in the top of the first inning, when the Orioles thrashed Oakland starter Sean Manaea on their way to seven runs. Baltimore coasted from there, collecting 20 hits (including eight doubles) and winning 12-5.
And so it goes for the A’s in another desultory season. They fell to 51-66, deep in the American League West basement and ahead of just one AL team overall (the White Sox).
There was a time when the A’s at least offered promising starting pitching. That hasn’t been the case lately: Manaea lasted only one-third of an inning, extending a terrible stretch for Oakland starters. They’re 3-6 with a 7.83 ERA in the past 15 games.
Numbers also told the story Saturday night — and they painted a staggeringly ugly first-inning picture for the A’s. Baltimore’s first seven batters all reached base safely. The Orioles scored seven runs and rapped out eight hits in the 26 minutes it took to play the halfinning.
Or put it this way: The only out with Manaea on the mound came on a play at the plate.
Manaea lacked velocity on his fastball, struggled with his slider and left too many pitches over the middle of the plate. This was not an isolated pratfall, either: He’s stumbled repeatedly in his past five starts, with an 0-2 record and 9.31 ERA.
“It’s been down for a while,” manager Bob Melvin said of Manaea’s velocity. “I think maybe it’s a dead-arm stage. Well, I don’t know about dead arm, but it’s August and he’s got 100-plus innings. He’s going to have to figure it out in his (between-starts) bullpen sessions.”
Manaea, for his part, insisted he’s fine physically. He seemed curiously baffled by his string of terrible outings, unable (or unwilling) to pinpoint the cause.
“My past three starts have been awful,” he said. “I’ve just been pitching really bad.”
This rough stretch threatens to derail a previously strong season in which Manaea seemed ready to establish himself as a reliable major-league starter. He was 8-5 with a 3.68 ERA in his first 17 starts.
On this night, the Orioles played pepper with the outfield wall against Manaea. He faced seven batters, with this outcome: Walk, double, single, double, single, double, single. Ouch.
The Orioles weren’t done, either. Michael Brady relinquished a two-run double in the first (one of the runs was charged to Manaea), so the A’s trailed 7-0 before leadoff hitter Boog Powell came up.
Oakland did show some spunk after falling into this early hole. Khris Davis smacked a two-run homer in the first — scoring Powell, who walked in his inaugural A’s at-bat — and Matt Olson added a laser-beam solo shot in the second. That trimmed the deficit to 7-3.
But any visions of a comeback soon fizzled. Orioles starter Dylan Bundy settled down, and then his offense stretched the lead to 9-3 on Adam Jones’ tworun single in the fourth.
Brady, the A’s reliever and Cal alum who was recalled from Triple-A Nashville on Friday, did his job in relief of Manaea. Brady , allowed three runs in 51⁄3 innings before giving way to Liam Hendriks in the sixth.
“Anytime a guy comes in and gives you that kind of length, 71 pitches, that’s a bullpen-saver,” Melvin said of Brady. “When your starter comes out of the game in the first inning, you’ve got to cover a lot of the game.”
The A’s made some noise in the eighth, scoring on Bruce Maxwell’s sacrifice fly and Marcus Semien’s RBI single. But the Orioles responded with three runs in the ninth.