Sports: Manaea extends scoreless innings streak.
Manaea turns in another solid effort to lead A’s victory
OAKLAND >> A’s starter Sean Manaea was about to throw his 100th pitch of Wednesday’s game with the Arizona Diamondbacks when he faced Eduardo Escobar with two runners on and no outs in the top of the sixth inning.
After a mound visit from A’s pitching coach Scott Emerson, Manaea then threw four consecutive sinkers to strike out Escobar, then got both Christian Walker and Asdrúbal Cabrera to fly out to end the threat with no damage done.
“He just told me that this was my inning,” Manaea said of Emerson’s visit, “and just to go out there and pitch.”
Manaea finished with a seasonhigh 111 pitches over six scoreless innings, leading the A’s to a 4-0 win over the Diamondbacks before an announced crowd of 4,090 at the Coliseum.
Mark Canha had a bizarre two-run triple, and Jed Lowrie had three hits
and an RBI on Wednesday as the A’s won their third consecutive series, sweeping the two-game set with Arizona and moving to 11 games over .500 for the first time this season. The Diamondbacks have now lost 19 straight road games dating back to April 25.
The A’s start a four-game set with the Kansas City Royals tonight at the Coliseum.
To start the sixth inning, Carson Kelly walked and Ketel Marte had an infield single. Manaea had not thrown more than 100 pitches in any outing this season, but his sinker remained in the 93-95 mph range as he took care of Escobar, Walker, and Cabrera.
“I had faith in him,” A’s manager Bob Melvin said of Manaea. “I felt like he could get through the sixth inning.”
Manaea has now thrown 15 consecutive scoreless innings after his four-hit shutout on June 2 in a 6-0 win over the Seattle Mariners. Over his past four starts, Manaea has a 0.69 ERA with just two earned runs allowed in 26 2/3 innings.
It was just the latest sterling effort from the A’s starting staff, which is 7-3 and has a 2.25 ERA (20 earned runs in 80.0 innings) over the past 13 games. Right-hander Frankie Montas will open the A’s series with the Royals.
On Tuesday, Chris Bassitt allowed two earned runs and struck out six over seven innings in a 5-2 win over the Diamondbacks.
“These guys kind of compete with each other and each one tries to pitch a better outing the next time out, so was good to see,” Melvin said of Manaea following up Bassitt’s effort. “To throw that many pitches in six innings and keep your stuff, he’s doing pretty well.”
“This rotation that we have is really, really good, and I think we can all outduel each other in a way,” Manaea said. “Especially going behind (Bassitt). He sets the tone for the trip around the rotation. The game he had (Tuesday) was unbelievable.
“It was nice to go out there and kind of do somewhat good, and just follow in his footsteps.”
In the second inning, it appeared Marte had made a rally-killing running catch, robbing Canha of extra bases on a well-hit ball before crashing into the center-field wall.
The ball, though, popped out of Marte’s glove and rested on the warning track. By the time the ball was thrown back into the infield by a perplexed Marte, Canha was at third
base and two A’s runs had scored.
“I was getting ready to spike my helmet on the ground in frustration,” said Canha, who initially thought he had a home run.
Tony Kemp and Elvis Andrus scored on the play, which was reviewed by Major League Baseball but upheld as a Canha triple.
Rule 5.09(a)(1) states in part that a catch is not made if a player “simultaneously or immediately following his contact with the ball, he collides with a player, or with a wall, or if he falls down, and as a result of such collision or falling, drops the ball.”
“He’s got to control it all the way and once he hits the wall, he’s got to come out of that in control of it, and he wasn’t,” Melvin said. “So I don’t think it was really too hard to call for them.”
The A’s next batter, Lowrie, hit a ball back up the middle that Peacock tried to barehand. The ball, though, deflected off Peacock’s right hand and toward the shortstop spot, which Nick Ahmed had vacated to try and field Lowrie’s grounder. Canha scored on the play for a 3-0 A’s lead and Peacock had to leave the game.
“The ball that was in and out of Ketel’s glove in center field was something that I think created a little bit of that deficit early on,” Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo said, “and we could never really come back from that.”