Another bullpen collapse costs A’s in 6-4 loss at Texas
Another late lead is squandered in a lost weekend in Texas
ARLINGTON, Texas — The A’s bullpen may have had worse weekends, but in the wake of Sunday’s 6-4 loss to the Texas Rangers, none come readily to mind.
In the space of three days, the A’s had a 2-1 lead in the ninth inning and two 4-2 leads in the seventh inning. They couldn’t hold any of them and lost all three games. Oakland fell from third place to last place in the American League West in the process.
There were two ways of looking at it.
“It’s frustrating for sure; we felt we should have won all three of these games,” third baseman Trevor Plouffe said.
Plouffe along with Adam Rosales and Matt Joyce provided the A’s offense with home runs.
“There is no ‘shoulda’ in baseball,” losing pitcher Ryan Madson said. “It’s baseball. There are no guarantees until the last out is made. That’s true on both sides. It’s just the game. The outs get tougher the deeper you go into the game.”
Madson’s last comment was seldom more true than in these three games in Globe Life Park. The A’s bullpen allowed 10 runs as Oakland went from the verge of being a .500 team to slipping five games under at 16-21. This despite three homers that made the A’s just the third American League club to get to 50 bombs this season.
Madson, who hadn’t pitched in the first two games, had his first pitch in relief of Kendall Graveman ripped for a game-tying double by Elvis Andrus. Shortly thereafter Nomar Mazara delivered a goahead single.
“Most bullpens throughout the year are going to have that wave of when it rains it pours,” Madson said. “The good thing is we have shown waves where we can’t be hit, can’t be touched. So we have to fall back on that.
“I wanted to be that guy today where we get out of that funk. I wanted to be that guy to get us on a good run. It didn’t happen. So the next game, whoever goes out there first, he’s going to try and start that wave in the right direction. That’s all you can do. It’s a long season.”
Graveman gave up two runs in the first inning Sunday for the third time in his past four starts. In each of the first two he gave up nothing else. And he seemed to be on course to make it a three in a row when he had two out in the seventh with a runner on second. But that’s when the inning and the game fell apart.
Carlos Gomez, the runner at second, broke for third base on Delino DeShields grounder behind third base. Gomez scored to cut the deficit to 4-3.
“I saw he was trying to get aggressive,” Plouffe said of Gomez. “When I got the ball, I still thought I had time to get (DeShields). I made a good throw, he just beat it. Gomez is aggressive. I thought I was aggressive, that I would get him at first.”
Andrus then tied it and Mazara untied it.
“That’s the game of baseball,” Graveman said after his third quality start in his past four games without him or the team winning. “We still trust those guys. There are going to be 162 games this year. There are going to be times when stuff like this happens.
“I have full confidence they will bounce back. You make one bad pitch in the bullpen and it seems like a bad outing. That’s the difference between those guys and being a starter. I gave up two runs in the first and was able to put up zeroes after that. Those guys don’t have that luxury.”
The three homers got n the A’s to the 50-homer mark, just the third A.L. team to do that after the Rangers and the Yankees. Of the 50, 33 have been solo, including the first two Sunday. Oakland has three homers in a game five times this season, three of those in the past eight games.
Joyce had three hits for n the first time since June 24. His two-run homer in the fifth gave the A’s a two-run lead at 4-2. He went 5 for 11 in the series to lift his average from to .181 to .210. “I felt pretty good there this series,” he said.
Left-hander Sean Manaea n is due to come off the disabled list Monday and start for the A’s in Seattle. To make room on the roster, Oakland is expected to cut down to two catchers by sending Bruce Maxwell back to Nashville, although the club hasn’t said anything officially.
The Rangers stole n two bases against catcher Stephen Vogt, and opposing runners are 19-for-21 stealing against him. The 19 steals are the most allowed by any A.L. catcher.
Madson’s blown save n was the fifth of his career against the Rangers. He came into the game with six consecutive scoreless games over 51⁄3 innings.