Jack Perkins Threw Six and Two Thirds Scoreless and They Lost Anyway

Four hits, one run, a walk off in the ninth, and 16,102 people in a dome in Florida. They're 61 and 90 with two more summers in Sacramento before Las Vegas.

Jack Perkins gave them six and two thirds innings of nothing Tuesday night. Four hits. No runs. Eight strikeouts. Eighty three pitches, and he was still sitting there with something left when they took him out.

They lost 2 to 1. On a walk off. In a dome in Florida, in front of 16,102 people, at 6:40 on a Tuesday, in the middle of September, in the second year of this thing.

I watched it. I don't know why I watch it. My dad had season tickets in the third deck at the Coliseum from 1989 until the day they left, and I think some part of me is still doing it for him, which is a stupid reason to give two and a half hours to a 61 and 90 team playing 3,000 miles from a city that doesn't have them anymore.

Four hits. That's what they gave him.

Jeff McNeil had one. Alika Williams had one. Henry Bolte had one and struck out three times. Langeliers had one. Lawrence Butler went 0 for 4 with two punchouts and is hitting .228 on the season.

They scored their run in the sixth and that was the entire offensive output of the evening. One run. Against a Tampa staff that ran Griffin Jax out for five and then just handed it around the bullpen, and nobody in that lineup made anybody uncomfortable.

Then Elvis Alvarado comes in for the ninth, gets nobody out, Junior Caminero drives in the winner, game over. Perkins throws the best start anybody on this staff has thrown in weeks and it goes in the ledger as a night where they lost by one.

You want to know why I can't quit them and can't forgive them at the same time? That's it right there. That game right there.

The three guys worth watching are all on the 60 day

Nick Kurtz is on the 60 day injured list. He played 99 games and hit .256 with a .396 on base, a .483 slug, 21 homers and 69 RBI, and he was genuinely, no kidding, the most fun thing about this team. Gone.

Brent Rooker is on the 60 day. Forty eight games, .200, ten homers, and that's the whole season for a guy who was supposed to be the one bat you couldn't pitch around, and I remember thinking in April that if Rooker and Kurtz both stayed upright this lineup might actually be watchable for the first time since the move, and then Rooker's year ended before the All Star break and Kurtz's ended on the last day of July and the watchable part never showed up at all.

Jacob Wilson, 60 day. Eighty games.

So what's left is Shea Langeliers, who's actually had a nice year with 23 homers and an .828 OPS and deserves better than this, Bolte figuring it out in center, McNeil taking professional at bats, and a bunch of guys nobody outside of Sacramento could pick out of a lineup.

And they still keep winning games they have no business winning, which is the part that makes me crazy. They beat Toronto. They beat Seattle twice in that series last week, including one where Butler walked it off, and then got hung with a 19 to 1 loss in between, and I watched all of that too.

The pitching, though

Team ERA of 5.40. Two hundred and twenty six home runs allowed. Eight hundred and sixty one runs against.

Two hundred and twenty six.

Think about that for a second. That's what happens when you put a big league season in a park built for Triple A hitters and then hand the ball to whoever's healthy that week.

Perkins was the exception Tuesday and he's been the exception a few times this summer, and the reward for it is a loss and a flight to the next city.

Two more summers in Sacramento

That's what's actually sitting on my chest here. Not the 2 to 1. The calendar.

They play 2027 in Sacramento too. Opening Day 2028 is in Las Vegas, and this franchise that belonged to Oakland for 57 years spends its last three seasons before the move in a minor league ballpark 90 minutes up the road, drawing crowds the size of a decent high school football game, with its best player on the 60 day and its ERA over five.

They gave away the Coliseum, the parking lot, the drumline, the flags in right field, all of it, and this is the bridge. This. A 61 and 90 team wasting a gem in a half empty dome in St. Petersburg.

I know what I sound like. I sound like a guy who can't let go. Fine. My dad's seats were row 12.

Eleven games left after tonight and then it's over, and next April they'll do it again in Sacramento, and I'll probably watch that too.

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