OAKLAND — For the second time in three days, the A’s were held hitless for five or more innings only to rally and win Tuesday, scoring all their runs in the eighth inning of a 3-2 win over the Angels.
Oakland third baseman Ryon Healy, who broke up the perfect game with a single in the sixth and delivered a bases-loaded hit in the eighth for the first A’s run, offered some perspective after rookie Joey Wendle’s two-run single gave the A’s the win.
“It’s just the ebbs and flows of the game,” he said. “Whether we get 10 hits in the first five innings and lose or get whatever it was, get four or five hits in the back end of the game and win, I don’t really care how it happens, I just want to get a victory.”
Sunday the A’s were hitless two outs into the eighth inning but pulled out a 1-0 win over Boston on their second hit of the game, a Khris Davis double in the ninth setting it up.
“I think it’s about understanding the process and focusing on our approach at the plate and allowing the results to come,” Healy said.
The A’s have had no shortage of hitting troubles in both the front and back ends of games this year. But the front half has been particularly problematic of late. Tuesday was the third time in four games the A’s didn’t have a hit in the first five innings, and it was the 15th time in the 49 games since the All-Star break the A’s had been shut out through the first five innings of a game.
Wendle, who was only promoted to the big leagues last Wednesday, had one big-league RBI before stepping in against reliever Mike Morin in the eighth. Starter Ricky Nolasco, who’d had a shutout in his previous start, had allowed just Healy’s first single in the first seven innings. But a couple of walks sandwiched around a Billy Butler single loaded the bases, and the A’s cut their deficit to 2-1 on Healy’s pop fly hit.
That brought up Wendle, with all of 13 big league at-bats to his name, with the bases loaded and the game on the line. Just before the at-bat, batting coach Darren Bush had a chat.
“Bushy told me that he had a changeup and another changeup that was even slower,” Wendle said. “I tried to stay with up the middle with it, and that was the product of a rollover ground ball that just found the hole.”
Ryan Madson had a 1-2-3 ninth inning through the heart of the Angels batting order for his 28th save, and John Axford got the win for his two innings of scoreless relief, but the major pitching was shouldered by Zach Neal, without whom the A’s don’t win for the 59th time in 138 games.
Neal, pulled out of the bullpen for the night after Ross Detwiler had been used to pitch the middle of Monday’s game to save wear and tear on the bullpen, gave the A’s everything they could have hoped for, keeping the Angels scoreless in five of his six innings.
The only inning that gave him trouble was the fourth, which started with Neal allowing his only walk of the game. With Mike Trout on first base, Albert Pujols singled and with one out, Andrelton Simmons doubled home a run. Kaleb Cowart followed with a fly ball just barely deep enough to get the slow-footed Pujols home from third.
Pitching on three days’ rest after a 32/3-innings stint of relief, Neal kept going to his sinker.
“With all those lefties, I kept throwing the sinker,” Neal said. “I was throwing strikes.”
More important, the Angels weren’t hitting many of them.
- The A’s have lost two more pitchers who’d hoped to start sometime in September. Henderson Alvarez has been shut down because of more shoulder discomfort. He’ll be looked at by Dr. James Andrews, who operated on his right shoulder in July of 2015, and another surgery is at least a possibility. Meanwhile, Andrew Triggs, who left Friday’s start after one inning because of back pain, has been all but completely ruled out of pitching during the final month of the season thanks to the injury.
- Jharel Cotton, picked up from the Dodgers in the trade of Rich Hill and Josh Reddick, makes his major league debut for the A’s on Wednesday. He’s a high-strikeout, low-walk right-hander with the reputation of having one of the nastiest changeups in the game.
- Arismendy Alcantara is back with the A’s for the fourth time this season, recalled from Class-A Stockton.
- Sonny Gray’s elbow and forearm issues continue to progress only slowly. He’s being allowed to play catch up to 120 feet, but there hasn’t been any time set aside yet for him to get back on a mound.
- There is better news on another starter, Sean Manaea. The left-hander’s back stiffness seems to be easing, and the A’s are talking about him getting back into the rotation before too much longer. When that happens, manager Bob Melvin hinted that the club might go to a six-man starting rotation rather than the standard five.
- Detwiler will return to the A’s rotation Melvin said, possibly Sunday. The A’s are still deciding if they will go with Raul Alcantara and then Detwiler or go in the other way.
- The A’s honored a group over a dozen of Cal Olympians before the game, and the Cal Men’s Octet sang the national anthem while the Cal band was heard from time to time between innings.
