Astros 5, A’s 4
W: Fields (1-1)
L: Balfour (0-2)
Contributed by Reuben
After trying and trying, in what must have seemed like a very obvious, suspicious way, to give away Monday’s game, the A’s finally managed to let the Astros win Tuesday night in front of 32,249…waitaminute, can that be right? The Astros got over 30,000 people to come to one of their baseball games? And 60% of the ticket-buyers weren’t Yankee, Red Sox, or Rangers fans? WTF? What’s going on here… do these fans actually know who Cosart and Villar are, and care about what they symbolize, the new wave of legitimate young talent that they herald? Or are there just waaayyy more Bay Area transplants in the Houston metro area than I ever thought?
Well, whatever their reason for coming, I envy the fans who were there, because they got to see a great game, albeit one replete with slap-dickery on the part of the Oakland squad. For the 2nd straight game, the A’s, perhaps feeling some pity for their whipping boys the Astros, committed 3 errors and this time the Astros actually capitalized. The first one was a hilarious, physics-defying throw by A’s starter Jarrod Parker, where, having fielded a dribbler about 10 feet from first base, he somehow managed to shot-put the ball 12 feet over the head of the first baseman, allowing Brandon Barnes to scamper to 2nd, from whence he would score after multiple sacrifices (bunt by Villar, fly by Altuve).
At the time, Altuve’s sac fly knotted the game at 2 and it would remain thus until the 8th inning when Jose Cisnero, who apparently won the coin flip to be the setup man for the evening, hit Josh Donaldson with an inside fastball with 2 outs and nobody on. The painful-looking HBP set the stage for another massive go-ahead 2-run homer by another A’s lefty batter with a poor batting average – in this instance, Brandon Moss. At the time, it felt about 99% certain that the game was over, especially once the A’s brought in the invincible-looking Sean Doolittle to blow the Houston hitters away in the bottom of the 8th.
But before we get to the 9th, I should stress how impressive Jarred Cosart was in this game. The kid didn’t have pinpoint control, especially early on, and he got himself into some jams but he was incredibly poised and tenacious – ok, fine, fucking gritty – in getting out of them, inducing 3 double plays among several other key outs. He wound up stretching it out to 115 pitches to get through the 7th, striking out Astro-killah Coco Crisp in a lengthy at-bat with a man on 2nd to end that frame.
So in the 9th, facing Perfect Closer Grant Balfour, who looks like he’d sooner smash his whiskey bottle on the bar and stab you with it than allow you to reach base against him, the Astros staged their improbable comeback. Maxwell reached on an infield single, Balfour threw the ball away, allowing Maxwell to get to 2nd. That didn’t matter, though, when Dominguez homered – which, by the way, gave him a team-leading 50 RBI (fingers crossed, the Astros will wind up with at least one player with more than the 55 RBI that, embarrassingly, JD Martinez led the team with last year). After that, Krauss ripped a ball to the RF corner that was run down by the Hipster Hobo himself, Josh Reddick. Villar then lined a nice double the opposite way, giving him 3 hits and 2 doubles on the night. At this point, it actually…started to feel like the Astros were going to win. Balfour was clearly so pissed that he couldn’t see straight, Altuve was up, and it just seemed like something was going to happen.
Then, after he walked, Altuve almost did make something happen, something bad and really stupid. Representing a totally meaningless run, Jose bolted for 2nd when Balfour’s pitch to Castro bounced in the dirt, realizing too late that Villar was returning to 2nd. With Altuve hung up and an easy 2nd out in front of him, A’s catcher Derek Norris – who had entered the game as a defensive replacement – threw wild to Moss, who, honestly, made a lame effort to dig the ball out of the dirt; the ball trickled into short right field, and Moss’s throw home was not in time to get Villar, who stumbled into a head-first dive to score the winning walk-off run. In other words, it was the kind of play you expect to happen to the Astros, not for them. But we’ll take it, by the BBG’s, we’ll take it.