Twins 9, Athletics 6: Four Runs in the Ninth Inning Was About Three Innings Too Late in Sacramento
Nine to one going to the ninth, in ninety degree heat, in front of 8,149 people. Then Jeff McNeil doubled two home and Zack Gelof doubled and Lawrence Butler doubled and for about four minutes it was a baseball game. Fifty one and eighty one.
I turned it off at 9-1. I want to be honest about that up front, because I've spent all season telling anybody who'll listen that I still watch these, that Sacramento or not, this is still our team, and then Kody Clemens singles home the eighth run in the top of the eighth and I picked up the remote like a coward.
Put it back on for the ninth out of guilt. Jonah Heim on, Henry Bolte on, and Jeff McNeil doubles them both in. Gelof doubles. Butler doubles. Three straight doubles off a guy who could not find the plate, 9-6, tying run in the on deck circle, in an empty minor league park in Sacramento on a Monday night, and I'm yelling at a television about a team that is thirty games under .500.
Then Andrew Morris got the last out and that was it. Of course it was.
Three doubles. Too late.
| Team | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Minnesota | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 9 | 16 | 0 |
| Athletics | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 6 | 12 | 0 |
Sixteen hits. Byron Buxton alone scored four runs and Kaelen Culpepper went 4-for-5 and Josh Bell drove in three without hitting the ball hard once after the first inning. Minnesota is a .500 team having a nothing season of their own and they came into our building and made it look like batting practice for six innings.
Jeffrey Springs is 3-12 now. Four and two thirds, seven hits, four runs, a Ryan Kreidler home run, and it's the twelfth time this year he's walked off a mound with a loss attached to him. I've watched a lot of those. Some of them were his fault. Most of them the guy behind him made worse, and last night was one of those too, because Hayden Juenger came in for the sixth and gave up three runs while getting two outs, and Kade Morris followed with five hits in two and two thirds.
| Pitcher | IP | H | R | ER | BB | SO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jeffrey Springs, ATH (L, 3-12) | 4.2 | 7 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 3 |
| Hayden Juenger, ATH | 0.2 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 0 |
| Kade Morris, ATH | 2.2 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Drew Rom, ATH | 1.0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Zebby Matthews threw seven innings and gave up one run and we barely touched him, which is the part that actually bothers me. The ninth inning rally came off a reliever who'd lost the strike zone. The seven innings before it came against a starter with a 4.86 ERA and we managed six hits and a run that scored on a ball deflected off his own glove.
Twelve hits, though. Henry Bolte was on base four times and scored three runs and he's hitting .276 as a rookie center fielder nobody outside Sacramento has heard of. McNeil had three hits. Gelof had two. Butler reached four times. This lineup keeps producing traffic and keeps stranding it, eight left on base, and I don't know what you do about that in the last five weeks of a season that ended in June.
8,149 people. Ninety degrees at first pitch. I keep coming back to that number because it's the whole thing in one line, an American League team playing a real major league game in front of a crowd you could fit in a high school football stadium, in a town that isn't ours, two years into a wait for a building in Nevada that I still don't believe in. We had something and it got taken, and the box score doesn't have a column for that.
51 and 81. The ninth inning was fun. The other eight were what this season is, and I'll be back tonight anyway, which I assume is exactly what they're counting on.
The roster is on the depth chart page, and everything else is on the A's page.
More coverage: Bay Area Sports section · MLB · Bay Area Sports Blog home