Bassitt brilliant, Canha wins it
With a firstround series days away, A’s starter Chris Bassitt looks playoffready and Oakland’s offense perhaps a bit too playoffreminiscent.
Bassitt turned in another superb outing Friday night, throwing seven scoreless innings against Seattle, but left with a nodecision as the A’s squandered early scoring chances. Those were erased, however, as Oakland rallied for a walkoff win the 10th, with Mark Canha’s tworun homer giving the A’s a 31 win at the Coliseum.
It was the A’s sixth walkoff win this season — they’re 60 in extra innings — and they moved back into the No. 2 seed in the American League playoff field.
Under this year’s extrainnings rule, Seattle’s Dee StrangeGordon was placed at second base to begin the 10th. He moved to third on a flyout and scored on a 30 pitch by Jake Diekman that got past catcher Sean Murphy for a passed ball. In Oakland’s half of the 10th, reliever Joey Gerber retired Marcus Semien and Tommy La Stella before Ramón Laureano ripped a gametying double to score pinchrunner Nate Orf. Canha followed with a home run to rightcenter. Before Laureano’s double, the A’s had been 0for9 with runners in scoring position.
“We haven’t been swinging the bat too terribly well,” manager Bob Melvin said. “But when we’re at home and we’re up last, we seem to find a way to really get good atbats late in the game and win games.”
At this point, Bassitt appears to be a certainty to start in the bestofthree openinground series beginning Tuesday in Oakland, though the A’s are waiting to learn their opponent to finalize pitching plans. Bassitt allowed one earned run over
his final four regularseason starts, with five walks and 25 strikeouts in 262⁄3 innings in that span. He could pitch Game 2 of the wildcard series Wednesday on regular rest.
“He’s been so consistent for us, you almost expect it out of him,” Melvin said. “Seven innings was plenty tonight with what’s coming up potentially in his next start.”
Added to the rotation in camp out of necessity — had Jesús Luzardo and A.J. Puk been healthy, he might have been in the bullpen — Bassitt finished the season with a 2.29 ERA. He notably had a 0.72 ERA in six starts at the Coliseum, where he would pitch in the first round.
Two of those starts came against Houston, a potential firstround opponent. With AL seeding still undecided, though, several A’s said they aren’t following potential matchups too closely.
“For us, it doesn’t really matter who we play,” closer Liam Hendriks said before Friday’s game. “Obviously, as a vindictive kind of thing, we want to take out the Astros. But I don’t care who we play as long as we beat them.”
It could require a livelier offense than the A’s have showed recently. Entering Friday, the A’s were batting .194 over their previous 11 games — a stretch reminiscent of their endofseason funk in 2019 that spilled into a 51 loss in the wildcard game. The A’s went 0for4 with runners in scoring position in that loss to the Rays. In their 72 wildcard loss to the Yankees in 2018, the A’s went 0for6 with men in scoring position.
Friday night, the A’s put a runner in scoring position with less than two outs in the second, third and fourth innings and did not score. They were scoreless through eight innings despite hitting five doubles. In the eighth, Seattle left fielder Tim Lopes ran down a Jonah Heim drive with two on and two out to preserve a 00 tie. Those were the eighth and ninth runners stranded by the A’s. Such situations have been an issue for the A’s all season — they entered Friday batting .231 with runners in scoring position, 27th in the majors.
“We hit some balls hard, just didn’t have much to show for it in big situations,” Melvin said. “But it did feel like our at bats were a little better tonight across the board.”