Yankees 9, A’s 5: Do not give free outs to the Yankees

Monday June 27, 2022

We support it as Yankees fans! But it was a bad move for the once-leading A’s.

The A’s had some hope for a short time. They led the Yankees 5-1, and even after giving up a couple of runs, they still had a two-run lead going into the seventh inning. There are, however, very good reasons why New York started Monday with 28 more wins than Oakland, and why they emerged in that crucial seventh. A combination of bad pitching, defensive blunders, and key Yankees hits resulted in a six-run inning as the Bombers rallied to defeat the A’s, 9-5.

The Yankees were the first to score, and while the man responsible for their first run wasn’t a surprise in the grand scheme of the 2022 season, he hadn’t been the driving force behind a rally in a long time. Anthony Rizzo drew some crucial walks against the Astros over the weekend, but he still entered play on a 0-for-19 streak. The All-Star candidate got things going with a solo shot.

Rizzo was back on the board with his 20th home run of the season. It’s the ninth time in his 12-year career that he’s reached that plateau, but never faster than on June 27th (his career-high is 32 homers).

The Yankees led 1-0, but Jordan Montgomery had a bad night. The dismantled A’s started the season with the league’s worst OPS (.603) and OPS+ (77), but the lefty didn’t pitch them that way in the third. After cruising through the first two innings, Montgomery walked the leadoff batter, Nick Allen, and despite striking out the next two batters, he was hit by an infield single by Christian Bethancourt. That was unlucky, but Ramón Laureano’s second swing was not.

Laureano hit the ball at 108.1 mph. Montgomery needed a simple out to end the inning, so he threw a sinker in the middle of the zone that barely moved.

Montgomery’s mysterious two-out struggles continued when he turned a 0-2 count on Sean Murphy into a hit by pitch with a 55-foot curveball that bounced up and plunked the A’s catcher. Then came a changeup that even a washed-up Elvis Andrus could enjoy.

The A’s won the game 5-1 with a base hit to right by Sheldon Neuse. Montgomery had allowed baseball’s worst offense to score five runs with two outs. That is completely indefensible. Montgomery, at the very least, recovered to strike out 11 of the next 13 batters (including a Rizzo error) before departing two outs into the seventh. It was the southpaw’s “one bad inning” game, but what a bad inning it was!

However, it usually takes more than one bad inning for the Yankees to lose a game. It can happen on occasion, but for a team like the A’s to pull off the upset, they must play near-perfect ball. That did not occur on Monday evening.

Giancarlo Stanton’s 409-foot homer off Paul Blackburn was the first Yankee to cut into Oakland’s lead. The right-hander is a solid pitcher with a chance to be the A’s lone All-Star selection, but the Yankees made him work. By the end of the fifth, he had given up a third run on a line drive by Aaron Judge that Andrus couldn’t handle, forcing A’s manager Mark Kotsay to use his bullpen.

In the sixth inning, reliever Adam Oller walked two batters and was only able to get out of it when Jose Trevino hit a routine fly and Marwin Gonzalez popped one up. Oller returned for the seventh, and the A’s lavished the Yankees with gifts, practically begging them to take the lead already.

All jokes aside, Oakland’s two errors were exacerbated when Josh Donaldson connected for a two-run double.

That’s a much-needed hit from someone in a slump, as Donaldson had a.565 OPS in his last ten games, with only one extra-base hit. Puk left without retiring a batter, and the Yankees added two more runs against Austin Pruitt when Trevino hit an RBI double and Gonzalez scored on a single.

The score was 9-5 at the time, Yankees, and with these two teams, the final couple frames felt rather meaningless. In relief of Montgomery, Albert Abreu pitched 2.1 innings without allowing a hit to earn his first win of the season. Someone will be sent down or assigned tomorrow to make room for fill-in starter JP Sears, and it could be Abreu. It could also be Manny Bauelos, who is underutilized, or Ron Marinaccio, who has options despite being quite good. I’d sigh deeply and sadly bid a possible farewell to Bauelos, but that’s just me.

Frankie Montas, the other top pitcher in the A’s rotation, will face Sears tomorrow in a matchup. Around 7:05 p.m. ET, the first pitch will cross home plate.

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