![\"\"](\"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/oakland_athletics.png\")
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By Tim Byrnes<\/p>\n
How are you gonna win a series when your starters give up 17 earned runs in fifteen innings?<\/p>\n
The answer is you don\u2019t.<\/p>\n
It is a very Athletics thing to do, to go 9-4 and lose a series, to an inferior opponent, at home. After winning the series versus Houston, the Yankees, the Mets, and splitting with the Rangers, the A\u2019s were glad to be continuing a homestand.<\/p>\n
However, A\u2019s starter Aaron Civale had a poor outing, and just like Sunday\u2019s starter Jeffrey Springs, allowed the first batter to get aboard with a double. Two batters later he scored on another double, and the pattern began. Every inning was a series of back-to-back singles that had Civale in trouble all outing. Three consecutive singles to start the 3rd inning, made it 3-0 before the A\u2019s broke through.<\/p>\n
Bats were silent as it took just 20 pitches to drop the first nine A\u2019s batters, but a Shea Langeliers double, followed by an RBI-single by Nick Kurtz got the A\u2019s on the board. Other than a run in the eighth, created off a walk, the A\u2019s were stumped.<\/p>\n
After giving up a single and a double in the 5th ended Civale\u2019s day, Elvis Alvarado allowed both to score, giving up a double of his own. He went on to load the bases in the 7th, and gave up a grand slam to Munetaka Murakami, who homered three times on the weekend, and the A\u2019s lost 9-2.<\/p>\n
A\u2019s exacted revenge Saturday, coming from a 5-0 deficit, to steal the middle game from Chicago. Starter Luis Severino allowed five earned runs in five innings, giving up a pair of home runs in the 2nd inning. Colson Montgomery connected for a solo-shot and Andrew Benintendi hit a 3-run dinger to have the A\u2019s down 5-0, but they didn’t fold.<\/p>\n
Jacob Wilson answered with a solo-shot of his own in the bottom half, and like the second run Friday night, a Lawrence Butler walk was \u201csmall-balled\u201d into another run. Butler went on to reach four times and steal two bases, to be a menace all game.<\/p>\n
Small-ball again, Austin Wynns scored after drawing a walk and being moved along in the fifth inning, to draw to within 5-3.<\/p>\n
In the sixth, Max Muncy tripled and Jeff McNeil had an RBI-Sac Fly to get within one run. However, reliever Hogan Harris gave the run right back in the seventh, when he served up a solo-shot to Murakami.<\/p>\n
In the bottom half of the seventh, following a Langeliers single that was 110+ off the bat, Kurtz launched his second home run of the year, 115.1mph himself, and tied the game.<\/p>\n
Both teams had runners in scoring position but couldn\u2019t break through until the bottom of the 11th inning.<\/p>\n
Jacob Wilson was the runner placed on second base due to extra innings, and Denzel Clarke moved him to third on a sacrifice-bunt. The game ended 7-6 when Muncy hit the sac-fly smallball RBI, for the game-winning run.<\/p>\n
The finale was a train-wreck for 3-0 starter Jeffrey Springs Sunday, when he gave up seven earned runs, by allowing four home runs.
\nHome runs by Derrick Hill and Miguel Vargas had the lead at 4-0 until the A\u2019s Darryl Hernaiz hit his own solo home run.<\/p>\n
Things stayed the same until the fifth when Springs again went off the rails. After a single, Murakami hit a 2-run shot, and in spite of having 72 career at-bats, chose a 7-second viewing on his handiwork. I expected a shot to the thigh was in order, but the Athletics took the high-road.<\/p>\n
To add insult to injury Colson Montgomery homered again three batters later, to increase the lead to 7-1.<\/p>\n
Not giving up, the A\u2019s pushed three runs across in the seventh, with a Soderstrom double, an amazing 12-pitch walk by Hernaiz, and a Gelof 2-rbi double. Gelof took third on the throw and scored on a wild pitch to end the scoring at 7-4.<\/p>\n
This was the first series loss since the opening road trip of the season and look to rebound tonight in Seattle, where they will take on the Mariners at 6:40pm PST.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Tim Byrnes How are you gonna win a series when your starters give up 17 earned runs in fifteen innings? The answer is you don\u2019t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11059],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baseball-2"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=95889"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95898,"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95889\/revisions\/95898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=95889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=95889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=95889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}