Oakland Athletics Game 29 – Wednesday, May 6, 2015 @ 7:00 pm
Game Attendance: Away Game
Season Attendance: 291,434
Lowest Attendance: 15,025 (Game 2)
Game Time: 2:56
Season Time: 85:50
Win Record: 12-17
Win Record vs Twins: 1-2
Streak: L1
AL West Standing: 3rd
Elimination Number: 128
Winning Pitcher: Kyle Gibson (3-2)
Losing Pitcher: Scott Kazmir (2-1)
Pitchers/Pitch Count: Kazmir/99, Smith/19, Abad/5, Alvarez/35
Total Pitches per game: 158
Total Pitches per season: 4112
Game Home Runs: 0
Season Home Runs: 25
Game Runs: 0
Season Runs: 140
Runs Rank: 3rd
Run Differential: 5
Differential Rank: 15th
Game RBI Leader: The Twins
Season RBI Leader: Vogt (25)
Most RBI’s in Single Game: 5 (27)
Game RISP: 0 for 8
Game LOB: 7
Season RISP: 78 for 260
Season LOB: 195
Game Batting Average: .188
Lineup Batting Average: .265
Total Players Used in Game: 17
Most Players Used in Game: 20 (Game 25)
Challenged Plays: 0
Total Challenged Plays: 8
Total Overturned Plays: 2
Games Won in Extra Innings: 0
Total Games Played in Extra Innings: 4 (6,7,18,25)
Special Notes:
There’s a great Spinal Tap quote that could be used to recap this game between the Oakland Athletics and the Twins but the powers that be don’t like us using the “s” word in our stories so I’ll just let you Google it. So what can we say about this game?
- A train wreck.
- A master class in inefficiency.
- An utter disgrace of a baseball game.
- A perfect storm of crap and garbage.
I could probably go on. Today marked the A’s second shutout loss of the season, which in itself isn’t that bad of a stat, but it wasn’t just a run of the mill 2-0 shut out like in LA last month, this was a 13-0 blowout of a game that was an underscoring of Yakety Sax away from being a complete farce.
Scott Kazmir had his worst outing of the season thus far, apparently believing he was playing the 2014 Angels, pitching six innings and giving up six runs on seven hits and two walks. His first two innings were typical Kazmir but things began to unravel in the third when he was scored on four times with a home run (more on that later), a triple, a walk, and a single to the first four batters he saw.
He seemed to right the ship after that inning and faced the minimum through the fourth and the fifth, keeping the A’s at a modest four run deficit. In the sixth he gave up a lead off walk and another home run. He finished the inning but this was the end of the road for his game.
Seventh inning, six run deficit. It’ll be tough, but the A’s can do it, right? Just have to have solid outings from the bullpen and hope that the Twins’ bullpen will allow some runs. Enter Chad Smith to help save this game. Single, HBP, walk. No outs, bases loaded. Ok, he can get out of this. A shallow pop up and a double play would prevent a run from coming home. Single, groundout, double: four more runs. With one out, Melvin turned to Abad to finish the inning, which he did.
Now down 10-0, R.J. Alvarez was brought in for the eighth and he quickly grabbed his first out. Then he gave up a double, walked a batter, and got a strike out. Ok, two men on but there are two outs, we can do this. Homerun.
Alvarez is not burdened with an ERA of 13.00 and Smith has 33.75. In total, the A’s bullpen has an ERA of 21.00 for the day.
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Couple all of this horrible pitching with a quiet night at the plate, the Oakland Athletics left 7 men on base, and some sloppy defense and you’ve got a recipe for the most depressing game of the season. We did get to see a bit of history, though, as Eddie Rosario hit a home run off the first major league pitch he’d ever seen. So…there’s that.