A See-saw Mounted On a Roller-Coaster

A’s 4, Astros 3

Contributed by Reuben

Since the Astros and A’s are both on the AL West now, it’s safe to say we’ll be seeing plenty of Oakland reliever Sean Doolittle, so I won’t make this recap a lengthy string of references to the Pixies album of the same name – although it is a damn fine album and a very funny name for a modern-day baseball player. I’m sure there will be other, more relevant opportunities for that in the future.

This was a pretty good game, considering the Astros lost. Brad Peacock flashed a lot of promise- mixing a consistent 93-mph fastball that seemed to jump at hitters with a great curveball. Over the first four innings, he allowed just 2 hits and struck out 6. The A’s did manage to scrape together a run in the 4th when Peacock had some serious trouble preventing baserunners from taking extreme liberties right under his nose.

But the 5th is when it really started to fall apart. Peacock struck out the 1st batter, then gave up a double to Chris Sabo tribute player Alex Sogard (who had already tripled in the game). The next batter, the suddenly-playing-like-Ty-Cobb-reincarnated Coco Crisp, hit a ball to the right-center gap that Rick Ankiel had some major indecision on… it looked like he might have been able to catch it, but at the last second he seemed to decide to play the carom, then sort of slapped at the ball with his bare hand as it hit off the fence… at any rate, not one of his finer defensive moments, and the result was an RBI triple for Cobb, er Crisp. After a walk to the next batter, Peacock was lifted for Dallas Keuchel, who gave up an RBI single to Seth Smith, he of the lifetime .205/.277/.332 mark vs. lefties. That gave the A’s a 3-2 lead. The next play looked like it would extend the lead, but Matt Dominguez made yet another unbelievable play, scooping a grounder near the 3rd base line and making a terrific throw to Castro to nail the runner coming in from 3rd. As Ashby and Blum noted, the vast majority of 3Bmen would have just taken the sure/easy out at 1st and allowed the run to score. But Dominguez went after it with no hesitation, but no wildness either, just an outstanding play to shut down a rally and keep the deficit at 1.

That was almost enough, too, as Keuchel kept the A’s in check for the next 2+ innings, and Carlos Pena hit an opposite-field HR off the lefty, Doolittle, to tie it up in the 8th. As Blum had pointed out earlier, the Astros were one of just 3 teams in MLB to not have a come-from-behind victory of any kind this season. After Pena’s unlikely shot, it seemed like perhaps this would be the night. Finally, here was some exciting baseball, a tight game, lots of tense at-bats and great clutch plays in the field. I didn’t even fall asleep, despite it creeping quickly towards 1am my time.

Porter brought in Rhiner Cruz with 1 out in the 8th. “Just throw strikes, Rhiner” I thought (perhaps out loud). He did, mostly, pumping a bunch of 95-97mph fastballs at the A’s hitters. Unfortunately, that annoying hobo-hipster-athlete, Josh Reddick, worked a walk, and with two outs, was running on the full-count pitch when A’s 3B Josh Donaldson lofted an outside fastball down the RF line. Rick Ankiel… tried, but came up empty on a do-or-die dive. He probably wouldn’t have been able to keep Reddick from scoring even if he had played it safe, but he scored easily on what wound up as yet another triple.

The Astro hitters went quietly in the 9th against A’s closer Grant Balfour, and the result was their 2nd 4-game losing streak of the young season. One can only hope that when this team does find some consistency, it will closer to “consistently good” than “consistently awful”.

Other thoughts:
-JD Martinez has looked terrible on most of his at-bats that I’ve had the chance to see lately. The Astros are essentially choosing to play him rather than Wallace right now, which is strange to me. Wallace clearly, if he’s ever going to hit, needs ABs against major-league pitching. JD clearly is in need of more time at AAA to figure out his swing.

-I didn’t get to see it, because mlb.tv was having technical issues early on, but Ankiel apparently hit a sharp line drive with the bases loaded and two outs in the 3rd inning, but right at the 1st baseman. Probably would have been the difference in the game had it gone through.

-Chris Carter is only 1-for-8 in the last 3 games, but he did not strike out last night, for probably the 1st time this year, and he’s now hitting .264/.339/.528, which is not bad at all. He seems to be putting together much better at-bats now, even when he’s not hitting bombs.

Got bombed, got frozen
Got finally off to a finally dozing…