The game was a wild one on Tuesday at Salt River Fields in Arizona, the spring training home of both the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Colorado Rockies.
This time it was the DBacks’ turn to be the home team as they hosted the Oakland Athletics.
Things looked grim for the A’s as the game got started. Sonny Gray was on the mound, which would usually instill confidence in the team, however, Gray was just not on his game Tuesday afternoon.
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In the first inning, Gray allowed five runs, three of which came off of the bat of Ketel Marte, who hit his first home run of the spring.
Gray had issues with his command in his second spring start walking four batters while allowing seven runs on five hits in just 2.1 innings of work.
It was quite different from his first spring start in which he threw mostly strikes.
With the Diamondbacks in front already by five runs when the A’s came up to bat one might not expect them to be able to do much against Dbacks’ starter Shelby Miller.
However, nothing was very easy for pitchers in this particular game with the exceptions of Chris Smith and game winner Ryan Dull.
Instead the A’s answered right back with three runs in the top of the second. After Khris Davis struck out, Trevor Plouffe got things started with a walk and Yonder Alonso moved him to third with a ground rule double down the right field line.
Plouffe scored on an RBI single by Marcus Semien and Alonso later scored on an error by catcher Chris Iannetta. The A’s scored their third run of the inning on a double to deep center by Jake Smolinski whose shoulder is obviously doing much better than it was last week.
The A’s made it a one run game by scoring three more runs in the top of the third on RBI by Plouffe and Semien. From then on through the bottom of the fifth the game was back and forth.
The DBacks scored two more in the bottom of the fourth with the A’s answering back with two in the top of the fifth and the Diamondbacks added on another in the bottom of the inning.
All of that happened before the A’s bats literally went wild. With the score 10-8, the Athletics came up in the top of the sixth inning and scored 11 runs, nearly batting around the order twice.
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After the A’s crazy inning of scoring the A’s found themselves ahead 19-10.
As both teams scored in the ninth the final score of the game was 21-13 in favor of Oakland but let’s look at the A’s players’ stats once the three hour and 44 minute game had finally concluded.
Alonso, Smolinski and Joey Wendle had a double each, while Marcus Semien had two.
Plouffe, along with Matt Chapman, who narrowly missed hitting a Grand Slam, each hit a triple, while Matt Olson hit the team’s only home run.
Jaycob Brugman, Jaff Decker, Franklin Barreto and Smolinski drove in a run each, while Plouffe and Wendle had a pair each. Semien and Chapman led the way with four RBI and Olson was in the middle of the pack with three RBI of his own.
It was a crazy game at Salt River Fields on Tuesday afternoon but when all was said and done the A’s scored 21 runs on 17 hits, making it a good day for the team out of Oakland.
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When will the A’s get a new stadium? They desperately need one.