Reds 5, A's 4: They Led in the Eighth and Lost on Wild Pitches. Plural. Wild Pitches.
Fresh off getting outscored 32-7 in a Tigers sweep, the Sacramento A's flew to Cincinnati, actually took a lead into the eighth inning, and then let the tying run and the winning run BOTH score without the Reds putting a ball in play. You cannot write comedy this good on purpose.
A new way to lose, which for this team counts as growth
I have watched this franchise lose in extra innings, lose on grand slams, lose 11-0, lose 13-1, lose 15-1, and lose nine in a row into an All-Star break. Tuesday in Cincinnati they unveiled something genuinely new: leading 4-3 in the eighth inning and losing without the Reds needing to hit the baseball. Elly De La Cruz scored the tying run on a wild pitch. Then a walk to Suárez, and Sal Stewart trotted home on ANOTHER wild pitch for the lead. Two runs, zero balls in play, ballgame. Reds 5, A's 4. The catcher might as well have brought a lawn chair out there.
This is the team that left Oakland, left the Bay, left three generations of fans behind, because ownership swore it needed a fresh start to build a winner. The fresh start is 45-68, twenty-three games under .500, and it just lost a game on back-to-back wild pitches. From all of us back home: how's the rebuild going, John?
Ginn came back and pitched fine, which made it worse
The genuinely annoying part — and there is always a genuinely annoying part — is that J.T. Ginn came off the injured list after two weeks nursing a finger blister and gave them a perfectly respectable start: six innings, five hits, three runs, five strikeouts. After a weekend in which Detroit outscored this team 32-7 and completed a sweep, six innings of competent baseball qualified as a miracle of the harvest. Jeff McNeil singled home a run in the fourth, Jacob Wilson doubled home two in the fifth, Cincinnati answered with three in their half, and Henry Bolte came around on an error in the seventh to make it 4-3. A tidy, winnable road game. They had it. It was right there.
And then the eighth, and the bullpen turned into a pitching machine with the dial set to "backstop," and the whole thing dissolved the way A's leads always dissolve — quietly, stupidly, and with everybody in green watching it happen like it was weather.
The standings do not lie, no matter what the broadcast says
45-68. Last time I checked in on this team they were 45-63 and I asked whether the bottom was actually the bottom. Since then they have gone 0-5 with a 13-1 loss, an 8-6 loss, an 11-0 loss, and now this masterpiece. The trade deadline came and went with the roster essentially intact, because you cannot sell what nobody wants and you will not sell what fans still recognize. West Sacramento gets minor-league baseball at minor-league prices — wait, no, major-league prices. My mistake.
I will say what I say every time, from the perspective of everybody they left behind in Oakland: this is what you chose. This exact team, this exact eighth inning, was the plan. The Giants lost a gut-punch of their own in Texas last night and I am furious about it, but at least that misery is ours, at home, with the kid Eldridge worth watching every night. The A's misery is a rental in somebody else's ballpark, and Tuesday it lost on wild pitches. Plural.
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