A’s Blowout Giants To Secure Series Sweep
Aug 16, 2020, 4:36 PM | Updated: 4:36 pm
(Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)
(Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)
After two close games to open up the series, Sunday was a walk in the park for the A’s and their explosive offense
The 2020 Oakland Athletics sure do have a flair for the dramatic.
Both Friday and Saturday afternoon, the A’s found themselves down to their last three-outs against the Bay Area rival San Francisco Giants.
Sunday afternoon? Different story.
The bats were alive in a big way, as the Oakland A’s scored a season-high 15 runs on 17 hits during a 15-3 blowout win over the San Francisco Giants.
Mike Fiers got the start for the A’s, while Logan Webb took the hill for San Francisco. Both pitchers allowed two runs over the first three-innings, giving the illusion that Sunday’s series finale could turn into a pitchers duel.
That would not be the case, by any means.
Oakland would have a massive, nine-run fifth-inning in which they drilled three home runs.
Chad Pinder broke the 2-2 tie with a two-run blast, followed by a two-run triple by Mark Canha to push the lead to 6-2. Stephen Piscotty hit a mammoth 454-foot three-run home run that cleared the bleachers to give the A’s a commanding 9-2 lead.
Marcus Semien’s two-run blast turned the game into a massacre, giving the Oakland an 11-2 lead with plenty of game left to play.
Piscotty picked up two more RBI in the sixth inning on a two-run double, driving in five runs on the day. Matt Olson went three-for-five in the win, while Chad Pinder, Mark Canha and Matt Chapman each picked up two hits.
Fiers (2-1) tossed six-innings of two-run ball, striking out four batters and allowing seven hits.
26 year-old reliever James Kaprielian made his Major League debut on Sunday, striking out Giants infielder Donovan Solano for his first-career strikeout.
Kaprielian was acquired in the deal between the A’s and New York Yankees that sent Sonny Gray to the Bronx during the 2017 trade deadline.
Oakland (16-6) owns the best record in the league and is 4.5 games ahead of the second-place Houston Astros.
The A’s will look to push their winning streak to five on Monday night when they travel to the desert to face the Arizona Diamondbacks. Be sure to tune in at 6:40pm PST for all of the action right here on Sports 1140 KHTK.
Friday, August 14th: A’s 8, Giants 7
For the A’s, Friday and Saturday’s games both looked as if they would be going down in the books as disappointing losses.
The Giants had a lead of at least two runs in each contest–needing only one or two outs to pick up a big win over a first-place Athletics team. Securing one or two outs with a multi-run lead surely couldn’t have gone awry in back-to-back nights, right?
Wrong.
The A’s stunned the Giants on consecutive days, first on Friday night when outfielder Stephen Piscotty drilled a game-tying grand-slam with two outs in the ninth-inning to even the score at 7-7.
It was an incredible comeback by the A’s, who would go on to win in 10-innings thanks to a go-ahead sacrifice-fly by Mark Canha to give the Athletics an 8-7 advantage.
Oakland has hit three grand-slams in the ninth-inning or later this season–two by Piscotty and one by Matt Olson.
Every other team in baseball combined has hit zero.
Piscotty finished the game with two hits and four RBI in the win, while Liam Hendriks picked up his sixth save of the season after striking out the side in the 10th-inning.
Saturday, August 15: A’s 7, Giants 6
The A’s looked to carry the momentum from Friday’s win into Saturday, as they took an early 2-0 lead against Giants starting pitcher Kevin Gausman after Marcus Semien’s two-run home run.
San Francisco would battle back, scoring three-runs in the fourth-inning off of Sean Manaea on a Mike Yaztremski bases-clearing triple.
Matt Olson–who also homered on Friday–hit his eighth home run of the season in the sixth-inning to tie things up at 3-3.
Giants outfielder Darin Ruf’s three-run home run in the bottom of the seventh-inning gave San Francisco a 6-3 lead heading into the final two frames, all but ensuring that the A’s would need another miracle to leave Oracle Park with a victory.
Sean Murphy’s lead-off solo home run to open up the top of the ninth-inning cut the deficit to 6-4. Tony Kemp doubled and Matt Olson would walk with two-outs, bringing Mark Canha to the plate with the game on the line.
Canha, who gave the A’s the lead in extra-inning on Friday, gave the A’s the lead once again with a dramatic three-run home run over the left-field fence to give Oakland a 7-6 lead.
“I was trying to go deep,” Canha said after the win.
“It’s not easy, but we got some magic going right now. I don’t really know what to say.”
The A’s improved to a league-best 15-6 with the win.
Fast Facts
- Oakland is off to its best start since the 1990 season when they started 16-5.
- Until his big game on Sunday, Matt Olson’s seven previous hits were all home runs–the second time in A’s history that a player had homered seven times for his last seven hits. The other player? Matt Olson (September 2017).
- Tony Kemp is 11-28 (.392) over his last 11 games
