Kemp hits clutch HR to defeat Yankees
The 3-1 win earns the A’s a series split in New York
OAKLAND >> Tony Kemp’s two-run home run in the eighth inning gave the A’s a thrilling 3-1 victory over the New York Yankees on Sunday night for a split of their four-game series.
Kemp’s fifth home run of the year was his third against the Yankees.
Kemp homered off Yankees reliever Chad Green in a rally that started with Mark Canha’s double over 6-foot-5 left fielder Joey Gallo’s head.
In his third start this year, Paul Blackburn blanked the Yankees lineup through five innings. He gave up five hits, all singles hit in each inning, and struck out one and walked one.
The A’s created a few more scoring opportunities against Yankees starter Jordan Montgomery, but were fruitless in their attempts to score. The A’s loaded the bases on a pair of hits from Yan Gomes and Jed Lowrie, followed by an error by third baseman Gio Urshela on Matt Chapman’s grounder.
Canha, in need of a big hit to break a slump in which he’s batting .141 in August, was called out on
an inning-ending double play. But the call was reversed on replay, giving the A’s a run, an unearned one for Montgomery.
The Yankees squeezed out an unearned run against reliever Jake Diekman thanks to back-to-back errors on pinch hitter Anthony Rizzo’s at-bat in the seventh inning. With Gary Sanchez at second base with two outs, Rizzo hit a pop up foul that popped out of catcher Gomes’ glove. Rizzo then hit a ground ball 88 mph to Chapman, who was vacuuming up sharp grounders all afternoon, but saw it slide under his glove to score the game-tying run.
The A’s loaded the bases against Jonathan Loaisiga in the seventh, but Gomes struck out to end the threat.
Yusmeiro Petit, Deolis Guerra and Andrew Chafin pitched scoreless innings to keep the A’s in it, with Chafin picking up his second save with a 1-2-3 ninth inning.
With closer Lou Trivino mired in a tough stretch, Chafin joined 38-year-old righthander Sergio Romo in picking up saves in the last two days to enable Oakland salvage a series split.
And, manager Bob Melvin said Romo and Chafin will be in line for more save opportunities in the next few days.
Trivino has been very successful as the A’s closer this season until the last week or so. He’ll flip into a lower-level temporarily after three consecutive losses, including two blown saves, in his last three appearances against the San Francisco Giants and Seattle Mariners.
Until Aug. 20, Trivino had a 1.72 ERA, 21 saves and two blown saves over 55 appearances. The three-game sequence bumped his ERA to 2.55.
“He was fine with it,” Melvin said after informing Trivino of his decision. “He wants to work hard, he wants to get back in that role and our best team is him in that role. I wanted to give him a little break from some high-leverage games. That might not be the case today. It might not be in the closer’s role, but you can see him in any particular role and he has pitched in any role for us so it’s not foreign to him. Whether we’re bringing him into the seventh inning or something like that.”