Oakland Athletics: 2015 Season Almanac

Game 11 – Friday, April 17, 2015 @ 7:00 pm

Game Attendance: Away Game
Season Attendance: 173,367
Lowest Attendance: 15,025 (Game 2)
Game Time: 2:33
Season Time: 31:20

Win Record: 5-6
Win Record vs Royals: 0-1
Streak: L2
AL West Standing: 2nd (.5 game behind Angels)
Elimination Number: 152

Winning Pitcher: Wade Davis (2-0)
Losing Pitcher: Dan Otero (0-1)
Pitchers/Pitch Count: Gray/102, O’Flaherty/11, Otero/23
Total Pitches per game: 136
Total Pitches per season: 1501

Game Home Runs: 3
Season Home Runs: 9
Game Runs: 4
Season Runs: 60
Runs Rank: Third
Run Differential: 21
Differential Rank: 3rd

Game RBI Leader: Vogt (2)
Season RBI Leader: Semien (8), Vogt (8)
Most RBI’s in Single Game: 4 (Game 3 & 5)

Game RISP: 0 for 6
Game LOB: 5
Season RISP: 38 for 115
Season LOB: 76

Game Batting Average: .242
Lineup Batting Average: .288

Total Players Used in Game: 12
Most Players Used in Game: 19 (Game 6)

Challenged Plays: 1
Total Challenged Plays: 5
Total Overturned Plays: 2
Games Won in Extra Innings: 0
Total Games Played in Extra Innings: 2 (6,7)

Special Notes:

Apr 17, 2015; Kansas City, MO, USA; Oakland Athletics third basemen Brett Lawrie (15) is lead off the field after a play at second base against the Kansas City Royals during the fourth inning at Kauffman Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Peter G. Aiken-USA TODAY Sports

This was supposed to be a fun night of baseball. Billy Butler was returning to his former club to get his AL Champion ring and the Oakland Athletics were going to face off with the team that eliminated them from the post season. It had moments of fun with a home run from Ike Davis, his first with the A’s, and two home runs from Stephen Vogt, his first multi-homer games in his career. It was a game reminiscent of that wild card game that CSN Bay Area insists on showing us on a daily basis. Both teams were exchanging runs, our ace wasn’t pitching bad but was hardly at his best, guys were stealing bases, and an Oakland Athletic was launching balls out of the park at each at-bat. Then came the seventh inning.

Top of the seventh. Vogt launches his second home run of the night. Pitching change. Brett Lawrie hits a single on the first pitch he sees. Reddick hits a ball that hits the pitcher. Pitcher throws to second for the out but Lawrie slides into second, in an attempt to break the double play, and shortstop Escobar comes tumbling to the ground. Lawrie is called out and the fans are livid. Lawrie, seemingly, apologizes to Escobar with a pat on the back as he stands up but that’s not sufficient for the rest of the team who begin to get into a spat with Lawrie. Umpires come out, Mike Gallego grabs Lawrie and the benches clear as Escobar is still down at second base. If the crowd was livid at the slide, they were close to a riot when Bob Melvin challenged the call at second, insisting that Lawrie beat the throw and kept a hand on the base when he overslid second. The call was upheld, the game continued and, like the wild card game, the Royals were able to take down Oakland’s bullpen for the win.

Twitter, as it does, exploded with Royals fans saying that Lawrie deliberately slid late with his cleats up to take down Escobar. A’s fans responded saying that it was a legal slide that clearly got away from him and that there was no harm intended. One super smart tweeter began trolling Lawrie and every person who responded to him with “why try to break up the double play with two outs” clearly unaware of the game at all since there were no outs at the time. John Hickey wrote a good piece speculating that the crowd had more to do with the challenge standing than the actual play at the plate.

The idea that the visiting team takes down a crucial member of your team and then gets the play overturned would not set will with the sold out crowd and would probably start a brawl on the field. Was it the right call? That’s debatable (I think he made it safe) but was it a justifiable call? Probably. With the next two games questionable due to weather, Lawrie may be able to get out of Kansas City without facing an angry pitcher this weekend but if either of the two games do manage to be played, we can be sure that the stadium will be tense and there will be a great deal of crowd boos.

Manager Bob Melvin, in his post game conference, stood behind Lawrie’s slide and insisted that it had no malicious intent. Former Royal Billy Butler played mediator with his former ball club and tried to smooth things over in anticipation of the next two games and Brett Lawrie opened himself up to a flood of Twitter vitriol by tweeting the following after the game:

Hopefully, cooler heads will prevail and after a good night sleep and a review of the play everyone will come to their senses and move on. It was a sloppy slide but it clearly wasn’t dirty.

Relevant Links

John Hickey’s Piece on the Challenge
Susan Slusser Reports on the Controversy 

Next: Lawrie takes his hit like with class