Small ball to start, big bats to finish
A’S 7, TWINS 1
MINNEAPOLIS — It was the kickoff of the three-day “Players Weekend” on Friday, but for the A’s and Twins, the gimmick du jour seemed more like a Turn Back The Clock celebration.
The teams bunted — Oakland even recorded a bunt single. There was a hit-andrun. Sacrifice flies. And in this weird, throwback game, the A’s prevailed 7-1, finally reverting to form late, with Matt Chapman drilling a three-run homer in the eighth and Stephen Piscotty and Ramón Laureano hitting solo shots in the ninth. Oakland remained 1½ games behind first-place Houston in the AL West and four games ahead of Seattle for the AL’s second wild-card spot.
“Good teams can beat you many different ways, whether it’s bunt singles to beat the
shift or home runs, flares to right field,” said catcher Jonathan Lucroy, who had three hits. “You’ve got to have a lot of weapons; you can’t be onesided.”
The bunt single, the A’s first of the season, came from Jed Lowrie in the first. Presented with a shift that included a four-man outfield and a third baseman playing toward the second-base bag side of shortstop, Lowrie, batting left-handed, bunted the first pitch from Jake Odorizzi foul, then placed the next one just out of Odorizzi’s range to the third-base side of the mound.
“I thought they’d mistaken me for (Texas slugger) Joey Gallo,” Lowrie said of the fourman outfield. “But I like hits.”
The A’s had been at risk of becoming the first team in major-league history to fail to record a bunt single over the course of a season.
His next time up, in the fourth, Lowrie was presented with a less extreme shift, but Odorizzi walked him. Odorizzi then fielded a tapper by Khris Davis and threw wildly toward second, and both runners were safe on the error, Lowrie advancing to third on the play. He scored on a sacrifice fly by Matt Olson.
The Twins tied it in the bottom of the inning with a small-ball inning extraordinaire. Eddie Rosario bunted for a base hit and went to second when Oakland starter Sean Manaea’s toss went wildly past first. Jorge Polanco, the Twins’ cleanup man, sacrificed Rosario over to third, and Miguel Sano sent him in with a sacrifice fly.
The A’s scored their second run more conventionally — Mark Canha doubled, ending an 0-for-14 stretch, and Lucroy singled him in to put Oakland in front again in the fifth.
With Odorizzi out of the game in the eighth, Oakland returned to large ball, when with two on, Chapman sent his 18th homer out to right. Piscotty hit his 17th the next inning, and Laureano his third — all this week.
It was also a return to the A’s MO much of the season: wait out the starter, score in the eighth inning. The team has scored a major-league-high 94 runs in the eighth.
Manaea came out with a man on and none out in the sixth, having thrown only 67 pitches, but with cleanup man Polanco coming up, manager Bob Melvin turned it over to the A’s bullpen.
“We had a full ’pen today and based on the last couple of starts, I didn’t want to get (Manaea) into a jam where he has a chance to take a loss,” Melvin said. “When we have a full boat down there, we’ll probably be a little bit quicker with the bullpen.”
Lou Trivino needed only five pitches, four strikes, to get out of the sixth (Polanco sacrificed
again, and Trivino got groundouts from Sano and Tyler Austin), then ex-Twins closer Fernando Rodney got the seventh. After he came out to a decent round of applause, he struck out three and walked one.
Oakland’s other two new relievers finished up. Jeurys Familia worked a 1-2-3 eighth, and Shawn Kelley pitched a scoreless ninth. When leading after seven innings, the A’s are 54-0, the only undefeated team in the majors. “I wasn’t really surprised,” Manaea said. “Everyone has complete trust in the bullpen.”
Manaea, who’d allowed nine hits and six runs in just four innings against Houston on Sunday, gave up five hits and a walk in earning his 12th win to match his career high, set last year. The run off him was unearned, thanks to his error. It was his first outing without giving up an earned run since April.
The A’s, who dropped the opener of the series Thursday, are now 8-1 after losing series openers since June 16, and their 43-16 record overall in that time is the best in baseball.
“We’ve been playing so well, and all of a sudden we have two losses in a row, which hadn’t happened in awhile, so it’s time to respond,” Melvin said. “And they did.”