Oakland shuts out Detroit for second straight game, 7-0
Superstitious manager Bob Melvin ditched his in-game 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 backto-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.
“We just didn’t put atbats together,” Detroit manager A.J. Hinch said. “We weren’t able to piece anything together. I think we had one time today where we had back-to-back quality at-bats that ended in our favor . ... That’s two days in a row we haven’t scored a run, so that’s not going to lead you to many wins.”
The club’s previous pair of consecutive shutouts was last Sept. 18-19 against the Giants.
During this unbeaten stretch, A’s starters are 5-0 with a 2.63 ERA compared to 0-7 with a 7.91 ERA over the initial eight games. Oakland (8-7) won for the eighth time in nine games to move above .500 for the first time this year.
“The boys are rolling
right now, so it’s a lot of fun and a lot of excitement in the clubhouse,” Irvin said.
Olson hit a solo drive in the first on a full count for his third home run of the season, García connected for a two-run shot with two outs in the second and Canha immediately followed by clearing the fences.
Casey Mize (1-1) had surrendered only one run over
11 innings with nine strikeouts in his first two starts before running into a hot A’s lineup this time out. He gave up five runs on seven hits in five innings.
Dominating Detroit
Oakland has won 21 of its last 22 matchups against Detroit. The A’s improved to 27-6 versus Detroit dating to June 2, 2015.