The Macomb Daily

Blanked again: Oakland shuts out Detroit, 7-0

- By Janie Mccauley

OAKLAND >> Superstiti­ous manager Bob Melvin ditched his ingame candy habit during Oakland’s awful start. Now that things have drasticall­y trended upward, Melvin is sticking with a couple of favorite, lucky pens and specific parking places for now.

He doesn’t dare change a thing — the A’s are slugging it again, and the pitching has been impressive.

Matt Olson, Aramís García and Mark Canha each homered and the defending AL West champs shut out the Detroit Tigers for a second straight game, 7-0 on Saturday for their seventh consecutiv­e win.

“There’s more momentum now. This team never really got too worried,” Melvin said of the 0-6 start. “... It doesn’t feel great, you’re digging for that first win and we couldn’t get it until the seventh game. But once we got that, everybody just kind of relaxed, did their thing, I didn’t sense any panic from anybody in this group.

“There’s a lot of veteran guys on this team, so it wasn’t really an issue for that. It was just trying to get a win under our belt and get rolling, and that’s what we’re doing right now.”

After Oakland’s 3-0 victory Friday, Cole Irvin (1-2) struck out six, didn’t walk a batter and allowed four hits over six innings to earn his first victory since joining the A’s. The lefthander, tagged for eight runs on 12 hits over 9 2/3 innings in his initial two starts, hung tough against a Tigers lineup featuring five switch-hitters.

The last time the A’s blanked the Tigers on back-to-back days was in June 1973 when Ken Holtzman and Catfish Hunter did it on Oakland’s way to the second of three straight World Series championsh­ips.

 ?? TONY AVELAR — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ?? Detroit Tigers left fielder JaCoby Jones (21) cannot make the catch on a triple by Oakland Athletics’ Matt Chapman during the first inning of Saturday’s game in Oakland, Calif.
TONY AVELAR — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Detroit Tigers left fielder JaCoby Jones (21) cannot make the catch on a triple by Oakland Athletics’ Matt Chapman during the first inning of Saturday’s game in Oakland, Calif.

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