Tigers 11, A's 0: Swept, Shut Out, and Outscored 32-7 in Three Days

Thirteen to one. Eight to six. Eleven to nothing. I checked the score Sunday afternoon out of morbid curiosity, saw a zero next to the A's in the eighth, and honestly felt something I did not expect to feel about this franchise anymore, which is embarrassment on behalf of the guys who have to wear the uniform.

Thirty-two to seven. In one weekend. In your own building.

I want you to sit with that number the way I did. Detroit came to Sacramento and scored thirteen, then eight, then eleven, and took seven runs off this team across three entire games. That is not getting swept. That is getting used as a tune-up by a club fighting for a wild card.

And nobody was there to see it. That is the thing I cannot get past. This is what they burned Oakland down for. A minor league park, a 45-67 ballclub, and a Sunday afternoon where the other team's backups are padding their stats.

Gage Jump could not find the plate and I could see it coming from the first batter

Six walks. In three and two-thirds innings. Six! Torkelson doubles home two in the first before the A's have taken a real swing, and then the fourth inning happens: Torres singles home two, Valencia doubles home two, and it is 6-0 and the game is finished and there are five and a half innings left to play. He struck out five, so it is not that the kid has nothing. It is that he could not throw a strike when it mattered and there is nobody on that staff behind him who could either.

Watching a young pitcher walk the ballpark is one thing when the team behind him is good. When the team is twenty-two games under, it is just a long afternoon nobody asked for.

Seven hits. Nine men left on. Zero runs. Explain that to me.

You have to actually get people on base to strand nine of them, which means the A's were on base all afternoon and did absolutely nothing with it. McNeil had two hits. Soderstrom, Butler, Heim, Serven, Williams had one apiece. Not one of them scored. Not one.

Meanwhile Keider Montero — who I could not have picked out of a lineup on Saturday — throws six shutout innings on two hits and walks off the mound looking like he was playing catch. That is what this lineup does to opposing starters now. It makes them look like aces.

And then they ran an outfielder out there to pitch

Bowden gives up four in the eighth — another Valencia double, a Torkelson single, a force out — and it is 10-0, and at that point there is no reason to burn another real arm, so out comes Carlos Cortes. An outfielder. A guy who had already hit twice in the game. He gets sent to the mound in the ninth inning of a game at your own home ballpark, and James Outman takes him deep.

Eleven to nothing, off a position player, at home, in front of nobody. If you wanted one image that sums up where this organization is in August 2026, that is it, and you did not even have to look for it.

Five in a row, and it is going to get worse before it gets better

Two dropped to Boston, three to Detroit. Forty-five and sixty-seven. Twenty-two under .500, fourth in the West, twelve and a half back of a division they were actually leading earlier this year. Remember that? Remember the people who spent April telling us the move to Sacramento had been vindicated? I said at the break that it was a mirage. I hate being right about this stuff. It never feels good.

They hit .264 at home and .225 on the road, and now they go to Cincinnati, where they cannot hit. The deadline is tomorrow, which means whatever is left worth having is about to belong to somebody else.

This is not our team, and it is still hard to watch

I am not going to pretend to root for them. They left. They walked out on a city that showed up for them for fifty-seven years and they did it for money, and I am not over it and I am not going to be.

But those players out there did not do that to us. They are the ones who have to stand on that field and get beat 11-0 by a team that stopped trying in the sixth, in a ballpark that was never meant for this, because an owner decided a real city was not worth keeping. Somebody should say that out loud every single time one of these afternoons happens. So I am.

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