The Angels looked to start another winning streak after the A’s broke their six game streak last night. The streaky Andrew Heaney was on the mound, fresh off his best start of the year.
The streaky, and streaking, Justin Upton kicked off the scoring in the third by knocking in the also hot Juan Lagares on a single.
Oakland took the lead in the bottom of the frame with a rally to jump up 2-1.
Juan Lagares scored again in the fifth inning. This time on a single by the resurgent David Fletcher. 2-2 after 5, this had the feel of so many nail biters between these clubs over the years.
The bottom of the sixth, however, saw the A’s punch in three runs to take a 5-2 lead. Heaney exited with two runners on and no outs. He didn’t pitch up in the zone as much as his last start which I think contributed to not being as effective as last week.
Cishek came in, walked the bases loaded and allowed all three base runners to score. Claudio was able to get the last two outs with no further damage.
The story of the night was A’s starter Frankie Montas who went seven strong innings, striking out 8 Angels and surrendering only the two runs. He did so on only 98 pitches.
Once Montas left, Ohtani took Luzardo deep. Real deep. 116 MPH off the bat. 5-3 Oakland.
Shut down innings aren’t really the Angels thing and Oakland got that run back in the bottom of the 8th when Sean Murphy hit a bomb off the just recalled Aaron Slegers. 6-3 Oakland.
Jared Walsh led off the ninth with an absolute shot to dead center field, cutting the deficit to 6-4 which ended up as the final score.
Those damn kryptonite green uniforms. This is a bigger problem than spider tack.
Beat the bad teams & lose to good teams = ~.500 team = no playoffs & bad draft slot.
Oakland is tough. They keep the pressure on with grinding at-bats and fundamental baseball. Then they take advantage of any openings. You have to play at an extremely high level to beat them.
I also believe they play extra hard against their bitter rivals (and antithesis) Halos. I know a lot of folks in Oakland and they view So Cal as soft, materialistic and spoiled. So their “green collar” baseball thing is highly motivating against the Angels. I think they play extra focused during these games and Bob Melvin plays into that narrative.
Bundy was bad in Game 1. Our pen blew this one.
Fan-pain is relative. Consider the D-Backs. We swept ’em at home, then, taking a 20-game road losing streak into tonight’s game in San Francisco, went up 7-0 early.
The all-time record for a road losing streak is 22. (1943 A’s; 1963 Mets).
Stuff happened, then going into the bottom of the 8th the D-Back led 8-5, but Yaz hit a grand slam. Giants win, 9-8. D-Backs lost their 21st straight game on the road.
So: we’re a game below .500
But: we’re not the D-Backs, thank gawd.
This game is a loss because the Manger is clueless in how to manage his Pitchers. It is just so frustrating to sit at home and know Joe is clueless. When a starter is on, even at 98 pitches, leave him alone. 100 pitches is arbitrary, it is about the time the starter is coming around to the 3rd or 4th time around the line up. I have only been out of coaching 5 seasons, baseball basics still apply. Fundaments are very important. Pitching is the main ingredient and pitchers should go 6 or 7 innings or more to have a winning team. You can burn out guys who have to warm up 3 out of 4 games and come in the 5th and are burnt. Trust your starters Joe, they can go 6 or 7 innings.
It’s times like this I feel we’ll never see Shufflebot again….where is he right now? Is he safe? Does he miss us?
Shufflebot is resting for the Detroit series 😃
I think there was only one on when Heaney left. Is that wrong?
Olson hit one oppo to left off Heaney. Single. Maddon pulls Hean-dawg and puts in C-Section. He walks two, gives up a double to Andrus. From 2-2 to 5-2.
Why the living hell is Cishek coming in before Rodriguez? Why does Slegers have a job over Hoyt? Am I insane? Is it us that’s the problem?
That was my question. I did not have a problem pulling Heaney since he was nearing 100 pitches…
But C-Rod would have made more sense than Cishek. Of course, I am biased towards the power pitchers…
I’m biased toward pitchers who pitch like…how can I put this succinctly?…I’m biased toward guys like C-Rod, because I’m biased toward pitchers who PITCH AND LOOK LIKE THEY BELONG IN MLB.
Article title says it all.
Completely disagree. It should say Angels hire Joe Maddon, lose because of it 6-4
This loss was completely on Joe and his bullpen usage.
Bradlee747???