Reds 3, A's 2: Jacob Lopez Struck Out Nine on 87 Pitches, Kotsay Took Him Out Anyway, and the Streak Hit Seven

Nine strikeouts. Four hits. One walk. Eighty-seven pitches. A tie ballgame in Cincinnati and a starter who had solved the entire lineup. And Mark Kotsay went and got him. Two batters into the reliever's outing it was single, single, and a season that was already on fire got another can of gasoline.

Eighty-seven pitches. He was not tired.

I need somebody to explain the thinking, because I have been staring at the line all night and I cannot find it. Jacob Lopez went five innings against the Reds and struck out NINE of them. He gave up four hits and one walk. His pitch count read 87. He was missing bats with everything, in a 2-2 game, in a ballpark where the ball flies, and the number of Athletics starters this season capable of that stretch of dominance is roughly one. And Kotsay pulled him.

Hayden Juenger came in and gave up a single. Then another single. Just like that, runners on the corners, nobody out, and Noelvi Marte lifted a sacrifice fly to make it 3-2. Two-thirds of an inning, one earned run, and the loss goes on Juenger's record — which is not fair to Juenger, a kid thrown into a tie game in the sixth inning because the manager decided the guy with nine punchouts had done enough.

You can tell me about the third time through the order. You can tell me about workload management for a pitcher this organization wants healthy in September. I have heard it. I do not care. When a team has lost six in a row, you ride the arm that is working until it stops working. That is not analytics versus feel, that is just being awake to what is happening in front of you.

Two runs. Again.

The other half of this is that the offense gave Lopez almost nothing to protect. Lawrence Butler put one out in the first inning — solo shot, actual life, a ballpark that gets loud early — and then the A's spent the rest of the night doing very little. Rhett Lowder went six for Cincinnati and gave up two earned runs, and two earned runs against this lineup right now is a comfortable evening's work. Emilio Pagan closed it out in the ninth without a scratch.

Cincinnati scored in the second on a Trevino single, took the lead back on a Matt McLain solo homer in the fifth, and got the winner in the sixth. Three runs. That is all it took. The A's have now lost seven straight, and in most of them they have been within a swing of the whole thing. That is somehow worse than getting blown out, which they also did three days ago in Detroit, 11-0.

Post-deadline, and it feels exactly like you thought it would

This is what the schedule looks like now. The deadline came, the front office did what the front office always does, and the roster that came out the other side is a starting rotation with two useful arms, a bullpen with no margin, and a lineup that scores two runs and hopes. 45-69. Twenty-four and thirty-three away from home. And they have not won a game since the calendar flipped to August.

Butler is real. Lopez, on nights like this, is real. Ginn coming back off the blister and giving six innings on Tuesday was real. There are pieces here — there are ALWAYS pieces here, that is the tragedy of following this franchise — and they keep getting used up two runs at a time while somebody in the dugout goes to the bullpen a batter too early.

They go for the sweep-avoider Thursday. I will be watching, because that is apparently who I am.

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